Readers' Letters: Fossil fuel extraction is more damaging than wind power

In an extended and tedious polemic against wind turbines (Letters 10 January), Lyndsey Ward lists their real and supposed faults. However, it is a young and developing industry and most of these will be eliminated as it evolves. And they are trivial when contrasted with the environmental and human damage wreaked by the extraction of fossil fuels.

Let’s look at a few representative examples. Just west of Edinburgh are the Broxburn “Alps” – the bings which are a historic relic of the shale gas industry – still, 150 years after they were abandoned, releasing poisonous pollutants like ferric sulphide into the surrounding streams.

Coal, too, is a major source of harm to the environment. When I was aboy visiting my grandparents in the Rhondda, I was appalled to see the local rivers draining the mines, with water in which nothing could live, as black as ink. And it didn’t just kill animals – who can forget Aberfan?

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Nearer home, 20 years ago, anyone on the M90, passing the open-cast mine at St Ninian’s in Fife, which used to provide coal to Longannet, would have seen a vast hole in the ground which completely devastated the local landscape. It was to be restored, but sadly, funding has run out.

Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in 2010. The explosion  killed 11 workers and polluted the coastline from Louisiana to FloridaFire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in 2010. The explosion  killed 11 workers and polluted the coastline from Louisiana to Florida
Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in 2010. The explosion killed 11 workers and polluted the coastline from Louisiana to Florida

Oil and gas have created a plethora of problems. People in Cornwall remember the Torrey Canyon disaster, when the super-tanker ran on to the Seven Stones reef and released 90.000 tons of oil, killing thousands of seabirds and millions of marine animals. Worse was the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon’s rig in the Gulf of Mexico, which killed 11 workers and polluted the coastline from Louisiana to Florida with millions of barrels of oil. And worse still, Piper Alpha killed 167 people.

Given that it doesn’t release carbon directly into the atmosphere, maybe wind power isn’t so bad after all?

Barry HughesEdinburgh

North Sea

I was rather amused by your story about the SNP Energy Secretary’s announcement of a “plan for presumption against new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea” (Scotsman, 11 January).

While it is obvious that the SNP, although not the Scots themselves, are under the impression that the SNP own Scotland, I think it is a stretch even for them to believe that they also own the whole of the North Sea!

I am sure that decisions about the future energy supply of Great Britain will be made by the grown-ups in Westminster, in conjunction with all the other countries currently involved in the oil industry in that area, although they may as a courtesy inform the Scottish administration of their deliberations.

Scotland could of course refuse to have anything to do with any new scheme, in which case I am sure others would be only too happy to take the new infrastructure and wealth and employment it creates, and true Scots will follow the money, wherever that should take them.

Ian McNicholas

Ebbw Vale, Wales

Maths summed up

When I was last at school (admittedly 70 years ago) “maths” meant was algebra and geometry, and we weren’t taught either until we had mastered the times tables up to 12 x12, the four rules (the addition, subtraction, division and multiplication) of number, decimal and vulgar fractions, percentages, money and length, weight and volume.

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Those, with the later addition of statistics required for my academic career, have proved quite adequate to take me through to a relatively comfortable old age. The main use I ever found for geometry was in using a compass for hill walking, and the main use for algebra has been in helping my descendants with their homework.

My point is that for most occupations arithmetic is the thing, not maths. The latter is what many young people (and their forebears) struggle with and are put off by. Let’s teach (hammer home) arithmetic to all, and leave ‘maths’ to those who can better handle the concepts and ramifications.

Tim Flinn, Garvald, East Lothian

Spare part

Steve Hayes (Letters, 9 January) offered an interesting Scottish perspective in relation to the use of the adjective “spare” in relation to the title of Prince Harry's book, by instancing a Scottish expression using the word.

My own suggestion, using the same adjective, is that he is best summed up by the euphemism “a surplus appendage at a matrimonial ceremony”.

Fraser MacGregor, Edinburgh

Distortions

Leah Gunn Barrett (Letters, 10 January) may well have a point in stating that “the Tories are expert at distorting the data when they aren’t outright lying”.

It is somewhat ironic, however, to see this claim in a defence of the SNP! She says that Rishi Sunak would claim better figures on meeting A&E targets by including data from county hospitals. What about the data not included in the NHS Scotland figures? Perhaps Ms Gunn missed the Scotsman article (11 November, 2022) reporting that 2,000 patients a month presenting at the acute assessment unit (AAU) of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital were being missed from the statistics – deliberately so according to a whistle blower. And that’s from just one hospital.

The SNP do not need lessons from the Tories on how to distort data or lie. The most recent example in a very long list can be found in The Scotsman of 10 January reporting that minutes of a meeting between Nicola Sturgeon and Jim McColl about a contract costing the taxpayer hundreds of millions “can not be found”!

The only way to prevent the collapse of our public services is to rid ourselves of the feckless and dishonest governments at both Westminster and Holyrood.

Colin Hamilton, Edinburgh

Healthy sce pticism

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Thank goodness for Hugh Pennington who regularly corrects some of your other correspondents’ misleading assertions.

A further example of such assertions is Catriona C Clark (Letters, 11 January) who states that Scotland’s shortage of NHS staff resulting from Brexit “can only be addressed by Scotland rejoining the EU”.

Firstly, it is disgraceful that she still expects other countries, many of them poorer, to provide our health and care staff.

Secondly, to rejoin would take several years during which time our Holyrood government could make the political decision to admit its past errors and reverse its deliberate policy for several years of limiting our numbers of Scottish nursing and doctor trainees in favour of those from outside Scotland.

Thirdly, could she (or preferably your impartial health experts) provide credible evidence that Scotland’s nurses are the “best paid in the UK” (at all grades and to include pensions and other benefits) as I have seen that assertion denied elsewhere. And if true, is it partially or wholly funded by the Barnett formula effect?

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

NHS co-operation

Over recent weeks Wes Streeting, Shadow Health Secretary, kept popping up on our media claiming only Labour had a plan for the future of the NHS. Having listened this week to a radio debate on the complexity of the problems facing the (English) NHS, it became obvious that even the mighty Wes really does not have the answer. At least he now agrees with his government counterparts that more money is no longer the simple answer and that bipartisan action on NHS reform would be sensible.

Or he and others could look to Scotland where we are told that situation up here is better than in England and that our Health Secretary, the beleaguered Humza Yousaf, has a plan that he put in place last year.

Having seen the latest Public Health Scotland data, however, I fear we need more than a bipartisan approach and that a cross-border approach would at least offer significant efficiency savings that could be ploughed back into the system. It won’t happen. Political dogma, particularly in Scotland, is more important than the health of the people

Ken Currie, Edinburgh

Jack’s spinning

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Alister Jack, Westminster’s man in Scotland, tells us that his Scottish Office spent £1.5 million from Scottish taxes in the two years to 2023 on staff to “promote Scottish interests in the rest of the UK”.

If this is meant to refer to our commercial and industrial interests, we have no reason to rely on his help or on that of his private army of spin doctors. It is our own producers who are best able to advertise their own products and our own representatives overseas who are most effective in securing inward investment.

For all his expenditure, even he is unable to point to any successes. Yet we who live in Scotland know that Brexit, delivered against our wishes by him and his colleagues, is already filling the country with food banks while we have to watch our taxes being misused and poverty increase

The policies of the Tory Party at Westminster appear hell bent on leaving the people of Scotland poorer each year while Keir Starmer rubs our noses in the Brexit disaster by reiterating the slogan “Take Back Control”. Our only hope is to look forward to being able to vote for a party in an independent Scotland which has full control of our future and a radically different set of priorities from those Jack is trying to sell us.

Elizabeth Scott, Edinburgh

Lucky teachers

Sympathy for teachers, still paid while on strike for more money, is not universal among care workers on £11 an hour, with unpaid holidays, no pension, and long hours with often hard to handle patients.

Those carers with children are also prevented from working as they must look after them on strike days. Carers consider that teachers are quite well off and could use less disruptive methods. But then carers, by their very name, care for people.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Perth & Kinross

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