Mr. Stephen — I live all day every day in nature, a ranch on Red River in north central Texas with most of the acreage in wildlife preservation and some in cow/calf. I only say that because I experience the weather 1st hand and pay attention to precipitation, heat, cold, wind and so forth because I’m immersed in it, living in it, adjusting feeding, doing wildlife census, determining hatch rates wild birds, fawn rates deer, pasture conditions and so on. I am not a meteorologist or environmentalist and don’t think myself immune to psychological influence — I read views about global warming and I try to discount my interpretation of weather as unstructured (I probably distort my observation by inflated attention to the exceptional hot, cold, stormy, wet or dry). That said, I think environmental change is happening faster than the median models. I do my best to listen to BBC, read global news. It’s been 10 days since you wrote this article and when I read it just now the report sent me scurrying off to validate your information and get an update which left me somewhat astonished at the likely size of fire and change in Siberia. You are retired and seem pragmatic and inquisitive, I’d be interested to know: do you think our climate might be changing faster than the statistical median consensus?