Petition has no credibility
IT didn’t surprise me to find out that the ‘Oregon petition’ mentioned by N Waddecar (Viewpoints, November
22), which supposedly refutes the fact that the present global warming and climate change are caused by human activity, has little credibility among climate scientists.
Names on the list included fictional characters from the television show M*A*S*H, the movie Star Wars, Spice Girls group member Geri Halliwell, English naturalist Charles Darwin (died 1882) and prank names such as ‘I. C. Ewe.’
The New Scientist journal said the vast majority of people who signed had no qualification in climatology; the Scientific American journal checked a sample of signatories and decided that only 200 of the 31,000 signatories had a qualification in climate science and found that some of these no longer supported the petition.
The United States National Academy of Sciences said: “The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.” Two members of the National Academy of Sciences, described the petition as a “farce” in part because “the signatories are listed without titles or affiliations that would permit an assessment of their credentials.”
In line with UKIP policy, N Waddecar goes on to argue that fossil fuels are extremely efficient and wind and solar power are expensive.
I question the validity of this firstly on the basis that the wind blows and the sun shines and all we have to do to collect their clean energy is to put up solar panels and wind turbines. We don’t have to go into coal mines or drill holes in the ground and pump in dangerous chemicals.
Secondly, the recent bids for wind farms have shown that this is now the cheapest way to generate electricity, the price of solar electricity is falling every year and Nissan is now introducing a scheme to store electricity in the car batteries of customers with the help of the OVO energy company.
Battery development will be a part of ending the use of expensive, poisonous and climate damaging fossil fuels, because more power will be available when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Sam Darby, Burnage Green Party