The topic of weather manipulation is one for conspiracy theorists - Yorkshire Post Letters

The Yorkshire Post publishes a wide range of opinions, not all of which I would agree with, but different interpretations on similar facts are a feature of a free press. However I wonder why you devote so much valuable space in the paper to the increasingly bizarre views of GP Taylor.

In his latest column of April 17 he strings together several discredited stories about cloud seeding to build up a giant conspiracy theory involving billionaires and governments who by their various cloud seeding experiments have produced disastrous flooding.

All the accounts he mentions of excessive rainfall and flooding have been discredited by actual meteorologists over many years. The sinister cloud seeding equipment he says were seen in aircraft were actually variable test loading equipment. Contrails, a favourite topic of conspiracy theorists, are a well-documented phenomenon, and intricate patterns of trails were photographed as long ago as the 1940s during dog fights in the skies over southern England.

One of the more outlandish claims is based on a BBC documentary that linked RAF cloud seeding experiments in the 50s with the disastrous flooding of Lynmouth in 1952. This has been dismissed by meteorologists who point out that a low pressure area passed over Britain as a weather front causing heavy rainfall on already waterlogged land draining into the East and West Lyn Rivers.

Similar floods had occurred twice previously in the village’s history, and a similar flash flood struck the Cornish village of Boscastle in 2004.

If GP Taylor wants to learn about the alarming man made changes to the climate he should read the research by reputable scientists who have spent lifetimes studying the subject.

In the meantime he should stop immersing himself in crackpot internet theories and stick to the problems of tourism around Whitby.