Space prowess

The argument about whether or not global temperatures have increased over the past 18 years or so rages on ad nauseum on the letters pages of The Scotsman, apparently without any hope of a definite answer.

We can visit a planet three billion miles away on the outermost fringes of our solar system, and land on an asteroid, but we cannot measure the temperature of our own planet. Surely temperature is a mathematical fact, a matter of reading instruments and recording the result?

Not simple, I don’t doubt, but nonetheless a scientific fact, not a matter of opinion or politicised debate?

If the people who are so fond of telling us how we should live our lives in the future, and what the climate will be like in 50 years cannot tell us if today is warmer than yesterday, perhaps they should approach the subject with a little less bombast, and a little more humility.

Graham M McLeod

Muirs

Kinross