Let’s put reliables before renewables

The message on Wednesday’s letters page is absolutely clear, that there is no utility at all in the costly, and perhaps crippling, quest for minimisation of CO² emissions from the UK, including Scotland.

In contrast is the report of Dr James Hansen’s quite unsubstantiated, even preposterous, claim that the “whole world” is looking to Scotland for a moral and practical lead in curbing CO² output, in the cause of offsetting global warming and harmful effects of climate change.

These diametrically opposed opinions do not clash merely theoretically. Their practical and economic divergence must inform our governmental policy- makers’ decision-making, which has, so far, tended towards the Hansen viewpoint.

Our position is now that we simply cannot afford to continue with such “greenery”, which can have no more than a token, perhaps moral, impact on world climate change.

Even if our national “bank-balances” were healthy, the effects of curtailing local greenhouse gas emissions would be dwarfed by increases elsewhere, especially in the Far East, from outsourcing of industrial production from the West.

There is no prospect at all of compliance with Dr Hansen’s CO² -curbing pleas by nations with such outsourced industrial production.

Therefore, despite any personal convictions to the contrary, our political leaders must now give up on their perceived high moral principle of seeking to curb our greenhouse gas output.

These token gestures are beyond our means and of no practical help in influencing climate changes.

We must end at once the “own-goal” installation of wind turbines, and substitute natural gas-powered electricity generation, having intensified the hunt for shale gas, already found in quantity in the north of England.

It is, in an economic sense, wartime: our national economic survival is at stake.

(Dr) Charles Wardrop

Viewlands Road West

Perth

It’s interesting that you describe James Hansen, here to receive the Edinburgh medal for contribution to science, as “Nasa’s climate change expert”, considering that his former Nasa supervisor, Dr John Theon, believed Hansen had embarrassed the organisation with his extreme views on global warming.

These were contrary to Dr Theon’s official views, and particularly suspect because they relied on computer models, which he believed could not accurately replicate all factors influencing climate.

This is undoubtedly true, as evidenced by up to date Met Office forecasts for the following day often going wrong.

Significantly, an earlier computer model in the 1970s suggested the beginning of a new ice age. Its compiler? The same James Hansen.

Robert Dow

Ormiston Road

Tranent

The opinion of James Hansen, Nasa climate scientist, that this is the time for Alex Salmond to come clean on climate change policy, is correct.

Here at last is a chance to admit that in a country whose contribution to world anthropogenic carbon dioxide is so tiny as to be irrelevant, that the current renewables strategy is a failed experiment that should be terminated in favour of an energy policy that will deliver dependable, predictable electricity from Scotland’s rich store of fossil fuels and divert the currently wasted financial resources currently given over to wind farm development to research and development into truly practical renewables for the future.

Ron Greer

Blair Atholl

Perthshire

Further to Clark Cross’s comments on shale gas and CO² emissions (Letters, 11 April), in which I was specifically mentioned.

In the UK, where no commercial-scale production of shale gas has yet been proven, it is not possible to make a reliable estimate of the amount of reserves available, let alone what percentage of those are then recoverable. However, a 2010 British Geological Survey study did say that, if the UK’s shale gas reserves were as productive as those in the USA, they would still only provide the equivalent of two years of the UK’s gas demands.

On the other hand, figures released recently by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the Scottish Government, showed that renewables are currently meeting around 35 per cent of Scotland’s electricity needs, with wind power providing the majority of this.

This also meant that the renewables sector displaced more than 5 million tonnes of CO² – around 10 per cent of Scotland’s total carbon emissions.

Therefore, Scotland’s renewable energy is not only helping our country punch well above its weight when it comes to generating clean electricity, but is also helping us meet legally binding targets on carbon emissions.

Niall Stuart

Scottish Renewables

Bath Street

Glasgow