Climate realities

On 14 April you published seven letters from people opposed to wind farm developments. Some made valid points, particularly about issues such as local democracy and damage to landscapes.

What I find extraordinary, as I have done whenever I read similar anti-wind farm views, and particularly now, at a time when the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is being published, is the complete absence in these letters of any explicit acknowledgement that global warming is a real problem that requires real, difficult, decisions to be made.

Let us remember that the IPCC, providing advice to 
governments from the world community of climate 
scientists, warns that global warming threatens “severe, pervasive and irreversible” impacts and that The Scotsman assessment of the latest IPCC report stresses that “the renewable energy sector must be massively expanded”.

Instead, we read Cllr Cameron Rose, for example, complaining about the subsidies provided for wind farm developments, without any acknowledgement that a 2013 Overseas Development Institute report found that, 
globally, for every $1 (60p) 
used to subsidise renewable 
energy, $6 was used to subsidise fossil fuels, the latter to a total 
of $523bn (£312bn) a year in 
2011.

Similarly, Dr McCormick 
repeats the false siren defeatism that there is nothing we can
do, along with his straw-
man reference to “controlling” climate by reducing CO2 emissions (when the advice of 
climate scientists is not about control, but merely reducing the human perturbations to
climate).

Perhaps opponents to wind farm developments wonder why their complaints appear to fall on deaf ears.

They should consider how such complaints could be taken seriously when they appear 
to be at least partially motivated by the denial of the seriousness of anthropogenic global 
warming.

Divesting themselves of that error, acknowledging that we have a real serious problem with the climate that must be faced, may leave wind farm opponents with at least a credible platform upon which to build their case.

Roy Turnbull

Nethy Bridge

Invernessshire

I really rejoice when items promoting the interests of wind farmers – in this case your 
editorial (12 April) and Lesley Riddoch’s article (Perspective, 14 April) are published there is a bombardment from real people in your letters pages.

The SNP government and Scottish Renewables would be making a serious mistake to dismiss such contributions as being “hot air” (Ms Riddoch’s words) from a vocal minority.

They are but the tip of an enormous iceberg.

John Milne

Ardgowan Drive

Uddingston