CO2 fears hot air?
Dr Charles Wardrop’s letter (3 June) tells us of the economically crippling impact of unilaterally curbing CO2, the unproven benefit of its application, and the insincerity of the Chinese approach to the Paris accord.
As far as I know, experts in the actual field of environmental science all agree that greenhouse gases will create a huge risk of climate change. Other socalled experts on the internet turn out to be dubious for one reason or another (in the same way as scientists once defended tobacco for ideological or business reasons).
Environmental technology of course is now good business. In the US there are more workers operating in the renewables field than in all the other energy industries put together.
In China 2015 was a major year for renewables development, with one wind turbine built for every hour and one soccer field size of solar panel per hour. The Chinese aim to spend $360 billion on this by 2020.
Unlike that narrow neoliberal thinker Donald Trump, many world leaders see industrial opportunities from becoming technologically advanced in this emerging field, and short of the whole case for renewables being proved wrong the majority of sensible people will see the risk as too big to be ignored.
So I think it is incorrect to see Trump’s rejection of the Paris accord as being a good thing for his country or for the world. Most bosses of America’s energy companies thought his decision to be a mistake as well.
ANDREW VASS Corbiehill Place, Edinburgh
It’s hard to get scientists or economists to agree (cf herding cats), so the idea that “97 per cent of scientists agree global warming is occurring and mankind is the cause” is implausible.
In any case, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change accepts that the “warming” is only 0.8 degrees over the past 150 years and even that has tapered off to nothing in the last couple of decades.
The figure came from climate alarmist John Cook’s website Skepticalscience.com, which exists to defend the predictions of climate catastrophe from all scientific challenges.
When President Obama, against the wishes of Congress, signed the Paris accord he used the website to claim “scientists say climate change is real, manmade and dangerous”.
In fact the accord’s only binding parts are new nationally-determined contributions every five years and support for “developing” countries – China wouldn’t sign until it was included!
The hysterics at Trump’s withdrawal are absurd because Paris does nothing to reduce global emissions before 2030 – it just kicks the can further down the road. REV DR JOHN CAMERON
Howard Place, St Andrew