SCRATCHED record claiming the use of the word "If" makes anything abundantly clear is surely an oxymoron (Roland Smith, "Can we agree to disagree?" Courier, May 29). It was most certainly a disagreeable means of misrepresenting someone else's opinions, that person being Linda Lever. It is clear from all her previous letters that Linda is absolutely convinced that climate change is happening. There is massive evidence that the overall trend in the Arctic is that the sea is warming and the ice reducing in thickness and extent. The trend is a net loss with variations from year-to-year. NASA is predicting the loss of a great ice shelf in the Antarctic, permafrost is reducing and so are glaciers. Oil companies are (unfortunately) scrambling to take advantage of this situation to drill in the Arctic - they are well-informed and wouldn't risk their money if they didn't think the conditions were becoming more favourable for drilling. We can all bandy scientific statistics or reports about complex climactic conditions but I am clear on one thing: If we take from the ground massive amounts of coal, oil and gas energies, that have taken "system earth" several hundreds of millions of years to form, and then inject it into the atmosphere over only 200 years at an accelerating pace, we may well expect to see a change. Any system experiencing a perturbation of that scale would exhibit different behaviour and our scientists are busily measuring those that are occurring around the world for us. Climate stability is what humankind requires in order to thrive and sometimes even small changes can quickly make systems become unstable and tear themselves apart. We would be unwise not to look for and reflect upon any changes found, or alternatively we can just bury our heads in the sand and collectively rejoice in a state of ignorance. David Harpur Crediton