Thank you John Fairburn for clarifying that your predicted three metre sea level rise 'came from articles [you] read 20 to 30 years ago” (The Weekend Sun, August 23), taken very seriously by some. However, even if that figure actually came from scientists, it would have been referring to some far off date, not 2019.

Your final statement 'there is no rising sea level”, based on casual observations of two exceptionally high tide events 60 years apart, must be weighed against a multitude of tidal records around NZ, and satellite data, which say otherwise. Not a fair contest!

Ken Jones (Weekend Sun, August 23) cites an amusing example illustrating earlier attitudes that Earth's climate was always stable. In fact, scientists have found abundant evidence to the contrary proving the balance is easily set awry by slight changes, not only in Earth's orbit, but in the percentage of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, natural or otherwise. Mankind is now making the biggest change in over 3 million years.

Peter Otway, Omokoroa