Sir I agree 100% with your correspondent R McGuinness - your letters page has never been afraid/ashamed to print comment even from those who criticise you.
When it comes to criticism it's better to criticise the comment rather than attack the correspondents, however from time to time some of your correspondents need a little chastisement since they are either naive, or dare I say, ignorant of the truth.
One such person is Mary Brookes who I seem to remember has made many comments in the past that defy logic or any sense of reality - Mary, starting in 2001 the Quassam rockets started landing in Israel, since then between 3000 - 4000 of these rockets along with mortars and other projectiles have rained on Israel - Mary what would you do in those circumstances ‘clap'.
The other correspondent who falls into the same category is Peter Otway - According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.
In a forthcoming issue of the journal Global and Planetary Change, researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji documented changes in 27 vulnerable, low-lying reef islands in the Central Pacific. Using aerial photographs taken as early as 1944, the areas were carefully mapped and compared with modern satellite images.
It turns out that the islands did, in fact, change over time, but they are hardly sinking. Overall, 20 grew or remained stable. The island of Funamanu, for example, expanded from 7.4 acres to 9.5 acres in size - a 28 percent growth.
Only seven islands shrunk, with the biggest percentage change occurring on Tengasu, which dropped from a tiny 1.7 acres to 1.5 acres - a diminishment of 9,670 square feet, the size of Mr. Gore's Tennessee mansion. - lets have facts - not fiction!
Rob Smith, Matua.