Quixotic debate

They should be aware that Alex Salmond’s stated target was a world leading 42 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and should also be aware that 42 was the response given by the super-computer specially constructed by to produce “the answer to life, the universe and everything” in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Windmills, particularly for Mr Salmond, are surely as good a vehicle as any for having a go at achieving the stated object.

(Dr) A McCormick

Kirkland Road

Terregles, Dumfries

Your reporting of climate change impacts on display in the latest edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World (15 September) contained a serious factual error.

Greenland, regardless of what atlas cartographers have chosen to represent, has not lost 15 per cent of its ice in the past 12 years. The pace of change around the margin of the ice sheet over the past decade has been rapid but, even so, that equates to much less than a 1 per cent loss of ice.

This sounds like a small quantity but it has important implications for a global sea level rise, and is a significant story in its own right.

As a high school student growing up in Dundee, I must have consulted The Times Atlas of the World several times a week for school projects. As a scientist now conducting research into the state of the polar ice sheets, I am disappointed that the atlas has taken a serious hit to its cartographic credibility.

Gordon Hamilton, PhD

Professor of Climate and Earth Sciences

University of Maine

Orono, Maine, USA