Letter: Wind power

Your environment correspondent reports electricity production by wind turbines (8 September) as if she were advertising for the developers and landowners of the Whitelee installation, ie tendentiously, as is often found in reports on "green" topics. You fail to give a true picture of their actual as opposed to potential electricity production, or as a proportion of the total derived from all sources.

We know from the respected, official New Electricity Trading Arrangements (Neta) website that the UK wind turbines' contribution is usually tiny, compared with power from fossil fuel and nuclear generators, typically considerably less than 2 per cent of the total.

Likewise, in quoting CO2 emissions by "public sector polluters" and others, you give their amounts in tonnes, which may give a misleading impression in relative terms, comparing with total world outputs.

We know that the whole UK accounts for less than 2 per cent of the world output, and Scotland for less than 0.2 per cent.

Thus, since released greenhouse gases are spread very widely in the atmosphere, reporting national emissions gives an unrealistic impression of their impact on the planet's atmosphere's "greenhouse" state.

Because of our virtually negligible national greenhouse gas emissions, the proposed reductions politicians call for and boast about are very misleading to the uninformed reader, and can only damage our economy, for no useful benefit to us or the world as a whole. We delude ourselves if we swallow these misleading impressions.

(Dr) Charles Wardrop

Viewlands Road West

Perth

Your photograph (8 September) shows a piper standing in the middle of the Whitelee wind farm. What is his purpose? Is he a permanent fixture employed to make the turbine blades turn when the wind doesn't blow? I think we should be told.

W Flood

Rowanbank Road

Dumfries