Carbon dioxide

I would like to take issue with GM Lindsay’s letter (3 August) in response to my earlier letter.

Many things are of great benefit to the world and human race when we have them in the right amounts but, when taken in excess, or in too small amounts, can prove dangerous and even fatal. Food and medicines are two such examples.

Two other examples are oxygen and carbon dioxide and both, in the wrong quantities, are fatal. Both of these chemicals are essential for life upon earth, as Mr Lindsay rightly pointed out, but what is occurring, and has been happening for a little over 250 years, is that people have been putting into the atmosphere an excess of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide is now acting as a pollutant, or poison if you wish, and having an adverse effect on the health of this planet by contributing to the global warming which is driving climate change.

If we continue along this path much longer then there is no doubt that the ability of this planet to continue to support life is very limited.

Mr Linsday also states that the global earth temperature has not increased in the last 18 years. According to Nasa and other authorities the ten warmest years on record have occurred within that 18-year period.

The ten warmest years on record, warmest first, are 2014, 2010, 2005, 1998, 2013, 2003, 2002, 2006, 2009 and 2007, only one of these years being in the last century.

Walter Attwood

Friends of the Earth Stirling

James Street

Stirling