'Can-do' leadership vital for clean energy

Published on Wednesday 9 December 2009 20:57

THE Scottish Government should certainly maintain its commitment to renewable sources of power and avoid using nuclear power (your report, 9 December).

Research reviewed in the November issue of Scientific American shows that renewables can meet 100 per cent of the world's energy needs (not just electricity) and that it is technically feasible to do it by 2030. This is in line with several other reports showing how to decarbonise the world's economies via renewables and improvements in efficiency.

Apart from wind power, there is great potential in Scotland for generating clean power from waves and tidal streams. The supposed problem of variability in wind power is much less of an issue than is sometimes suggested. A range of techniques exist for matching variable supplies with constantly varying demands.

It is now well-established that nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity. A recent report, Nuclear Subsidies, from the Energy Fair group shows that the real cost of nuclear power is disguised by several subsidies. And nuclear power stations are notoriously slow to build. The nuclear station being built at Olkiluoto in Finland is unlikely to be finished in less than seven years. No nuclear power station in the UK has ever been built on time. In general, renewables are quicker and cheaper.

When the United States entered the Second World War, President Roosevelt famously told the car makers to make tanks, not cars, and, despite initial pessimism, they greatly exceeded their targets. With that kind of can-do leadership, renewables can certainly deliver.

DR GERRY WOLFF

Penlon

Menai Bridge, Anglesey

Tom Ballantine's assertion (Letters, 9 December) that 84 per cent of scientists agree with the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), even if true, is a misunderstanding of how science works. It is not a democratic process where issues are decided by majority vote, and a single dissenter with the facts on his side (think of Copernicus) can overturn a "consensus".

One of the revelations of the leaked e-mails from East Anglia's climate research unit is that the debate on AGW has been largely controlled by a small group of scientists who have refused to share their raw data so that others could check their conclusions, and who have gone to great lengths to suppress the publication of dissenting views.

One benefit of the East Anglia revelations is that the evidence for AGW will come under increased scrutiny by many qualified scientists who have hitherto been insufficiently critical of the "experts". We can only hope that this will calm the hysteria surrounding the AGW hypothesis before we commit the economic suicide being advocated in Copenhagen.

ANTHONY ROBSON

St Johns Place

Perth

I write more as a "flat-cap" than a "flat Earther" and, personally, cannot tell if the Earth is, in fact, warming or not. I would leave it to the experts. But not for the first time, there would appear to be more experts than expertise.

Whatever, I have an intestinal sentience that whatever we do, it will be too little, too late. Don't tell the children – they are potentially the biggest losers here.

GEORGE COOPER

Westgate

Leslie, Fife