Commercial glasshouse growers add extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in their houses. Since plants grow by absorbing this gas from the air, increasing the available gas will increase the yield from their crops.

This is because carbon dioxide is the basic ingredient in all life forms – plants and animals. Plants absorb it from the air to make all their materials, and animals eating plants are all constructed on a framework of materials using carbon compounds as a primary building source.

The world's increasing human population requires increasing amounts of food. Indeed information from all places, suggests we are already desperately short.

To increase world food supplies we should follow the example of the greenhouse farmers, and increase the amount of carbon dioxide available to all our crops.

So let us burn more fossil fuels – oil, petrol, diesel, fuel oil, and coal!

No need to fuss about global warming as a consideration. The night-time temperature drop in dry desert regions shows that it is water vapour, not carbon dioxide that creates the majority of the 'greenhouse effect”.

John Mills, former BOP resident, New Plymouth.