No plan for Indyref after leaving EU

SIR, – Hopefully the Scottish Government has Brexit “doomsday” scenario plans, and will follow the UK’s lead and publish them.

Surely it has modelled the “what ifs”? What if Michel Barnier is right, and a deal is struck in eight weeks, or the “Rees-Mogg 80” swallow their pride and fall in behind Chequers? There’s hardly a cigarette paper between the Tories and many Labour backbenchers (and, if he’s honest, Jeremy Corbyn), and most people just want it to be all over, so what if they all cave in and back Mrs May?

Nicola Sturgeon bet the croft on “Brexit means Indyref2”, so a good, early deal would be a disaster. No credible work seems to have been done on lobbying for Scotland’s “Brexit dividend”.

The Brexit bus is leaving. Ms Sturgeon and Mike Russell should be sitting next to the driver, but after two years of huffing, threatening and disparaging, they’re primly standing at the bus stop on the wrong side of the road.

What’s the plan? If there is none, the Westminster “Power Grab” will become the Holyrood “Power Beg”.

Will Ms Sturgeon announce the end of Indyref2? What jobs, agencies and powers does she propose obtaining? Or will it be up to 13 well-connected, trusted, Tory MPs to do her work for her? SIR, – Geoff Moore (Letters, August 10) labelling me a “climate alarmist on sea level rise” suggests he did not read my letter very carefully or with an open mind.

I had indicated that “there is a great wealth of scientific papers available for careful study”, but I fear he himself has not been careful enough. He quoted a selected passage from a paper published in 2013 by Dr John Fasullo as his justification. The title of the paper was “Australia’s unique influence on global sea level in 2010-2011”. In simple terms, it rained a lot in Australia in 2010 and the rainwater did not run off back to the sea. Dr Fasullo concluded: “Interannual variations in continental storage can have a profound influence on Global Mean Sea Level that in some years overwhelm the background trend.”

Email correspondence with Dr Fasullo has brought to my attention a more up-to-date paper. This paper was published in February and titled “Climate change-driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era”. This notes: “If sea level continues to change at this rate and acceleration, sea-level rise by 2100 (around 65cm) will be more than double the amount if the rate was constant at 3 mm/y.”

Climate change sceptics such as Donald Trump and other “alternative theorists” will look even more foolish than they do already. Sea level rise and more extreme weather surges pose a very real and significant threat to all low-lying coastal areas of the world.