Sticking our heads in the sand over global warming concerns is untenable

Sir, – Despite the apparent difference of opinion regarding causes of global heating between a small minority who think we can’t do anything about it so wish to carry on regardless, and the greater majority – including the UN – who think we do make a significant contribution, the fact is that carboniferous minerals are a finite resource. At some point they will be completely impractical or unaffordable to exploit.

By then we will have had to find alternative energy sources, so instead of squandering what fossil fuel remains by turning it into energy and CO2 we should use it for more permanent objects such as reusable plastics and so on.

Many climate sceptics quote ancient epochal patterns while failing to understand that the biosphere then was radically different to now – at the very least there were no species putting CO2 into the atmosphere at industrial levels. In fact the opposite, as carbon sinks were being slowly buried through tectonic action.

Humans have been reversing this trend and increasingly it rapidly, particularly since the end of the Second World War.

The statistics (not computer models) of correlation between temperature and atmospheric composition are there to be seen.

The greenhouse effects of methane, CO2 and other gases have been laboratory proven for a very long time, and over the last 200 years human activity has reversed what geology has taken hundreds of millions of years to achieve.

What should not be forgotten is that for each molecule of carbon dioxide we are tying up two molecules of oxygen.

The reduction of oxygen content of the atmosphere also has an effect that is rarely discussed.

At some point we will have to create alternate energy sources, so why not accelerate this now when it is cheaper than it will be at the last minute later this century or the next?