POOR victimised Jeremy Clarkson made me laugh as he whinged about being picked on by environmentalists who have not “even half an inkling about the concept of debate” (Cornered by the green lynch mob, News Review, last week). There is no escaping this man in the media: he has his own prime-time television show and three newspaper columns to air his views. Sure, he can casually threaten to crush cyclists under his wheels (“can’t they take a joke?”), but throws a hissy fit when the tables are turned.

Following our petition and demonstration at Oxford Brookes opposing his honorary degree, we invited him and a team-mate of his choice (perhaps one of his many “eminent scientist” friends who can prove that current climate change has nothing to do with human activity) to a debate against one of us tofu-weavers and the woman who “pied” him. He hasn’t yet replied.

Alison Chisholm
Student at Oxford
Brookes University

PURPLE POWER: Clarkson takes exception to my name, my purple cagoule, my beard — and probably my bike if he’d heard about that, too. Shall we settle it with handbags at dawn? Jeremy left Yorkshire years before I started travelling from my constituency there to Westminster, and so he may have forgotten the value of a colourful coat when tramping God’s Own County in bad weather. But I’m surprised he doesn’t see in the genius who built God’s Wonderful Railway someone who might today be seeking systems of powering mass transit that don’t burn up the Earth’s resources quite so fast and foolishly as some of the cars Clarkson delights in.

Not only do I “mind if all the Africans die of disease and hunger”, but was shocked to hear at the last meeting of the all party climate change group in parliament from a Kenyan who spoke powerfully on how precisely our abuse of the Earth’s resources is producing disease and hunger in that continent.

Why not come and speak in parliament about the environment issues we both care about?

Colin Challen MP
Morley and Rothwell
House of Commons

CARBON COWBOYS: Clarkson states that he does not believe man is responsible for climate change and that western governments are wasting billions of pounds trying to stem something that we have little control over. While I must of course respect his recently acquired academic credentials, I find myself more inclined to listen to the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that considers carbon dioxide emissions a major contributor to increases in the Earth’s temperature.

The arguments he espouses are not radical or new, sceptics have been denying that humans contribute to this phenomenon since the theory was first put forward in 1896, usually to justify the continuation of their own behaviour.

Tom Brake MP
Carshalton and Wallington
Lib Dem Shadow Secretary of State for Transport

NOT JUST HOT AIR: There is not scientific disagreement among respected scientists regarding climate change. The latest computer simulations have proved to be robust and tell the story of man’s fossil fuel-burning.

The latest ice core findings state that at no time in the past 650,000 years has the concentration of carbon dioxide been as high as it is now.

What Clarkson is doing is what politicians and press in the US do — attempt to dillute the scientific consensus by finding the minor dissenting voices to muddy the political waters.

Alan Neale
Northampton