LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Spreading fake news

I THINK most people will have noticed, with the exception of the editor of the Rotherham Advertiser, how the letters written by Clive Phillips are becoming increasingly deluded.

In his latest letter he makes a claim that he has seen leaked footage of a helicopter armed with a flamethrower causing forest fires. The motivation for this, according to Clive, is so the fires can be blamed on climate change.

A quick Google search reveals that forestry departments around the world use flamethrowers as a method of creating fire breaks. No secret there.

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Clive also claimed, with no source of evidence, an ex-CIA officer blew the whistle and said the data on global warming was falsified to justify putting up taxes. Most of us know that governments don’t need elaborate conspiracies to put up taxes. They just raise them when they want.

Most of my criticism is not of Clive. It is of the Rotherham Advertiser who chooses to publish such deranged garbage.

Climate scientists have warned us for years that temperatures are rising and will eventually impact on the lives of us all.

I appreciate that the Rotherham Advertiser is a champion of free speech but that freedom does not extend to fake news (I prefer the old fashioned way of putting it — lies) and conspiracies.

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The more publicity you give to these unscientific ideas the more you impede progress on finding solutions to the climate crisis.

Moreover you burden my grandchildrens’ generation with the task of coping with the devastation the foolishness of climate change denial will cause.

Mark Stocks, Arthur Street, Rawmarsh

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