SIR – Has Ian Slater scored an own goal? I am no scientist but I should have thought it wrong to quote Venus as mentioned in the book by Carl Sagan in support of their insistence that man is responsible for the warming of Earth, which apparently has not got any hotter over the past 12 months.

I am pretty sure Venus has never been put forward as a planet that ever had life or the possibility of supporting life, so obviously its atmosphere is the result of natural causes.

And please note, those who keep on saying man is killing his own planet, Venus has not been destroyed but, unlike Earth, has no living creatures to suffer from greenhouse gases.

The Earth will survive even if we do not.

I have not read Sagan’s book but if it is as reliable as Al Gore’s video, An Inconvenient Truth, of which I have seen some extracts and which has been slated as very biased, to say the least, then why should I or others of my ilk bother to read it?

Philip Bird, Nabwood Terrace, Shipley