Heavy weather
In your main editorial (“The global warming conundrum endures”, 14 November) you write that the American Association for the Advancement of Science compares “denial of climate science to denial of the theory of gravity”. This may well be true, though not in the way the AAAS think. Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity posits that gravity is a property of matter (similar to yellow being a property of gold). However, Newton’s equations didn’t work out – for the earth and moon, or for the solar system, or for the universe. Despite this, all sciences are built on the overwhelming belief that gravity is a property of matter. It is this totally non-scientific faith in Newton’s infallibility which leads to nonsense like the current belief that 92 per cent of the universe is made up of “dark matter”, which we can neither observe nor interact with.
Similarly with climate “science”. Was it greenhouse gases which made treeless Orkney warm enough for trees to grow 2,000 years ago? Was it greenhouse gases which enabled the Vikings to grow vines in Greenland a thousand years ago? Or, perhaps, were they caused by some unknown sun cycle?
I have a book – Report From the Iron Mountain – which claims to be a leaked account of a think-tank appointed by the US President in the early 1970s. They were charged with coming up with ways in which politicians could continue to control their fast-growing populations. They presented nine solutions – number one being a “staged alien invasion” which would unite the peoples of the world against a common enemy. The third item on the list was “a global eco-catastrophe. If no such catastrophe exists, one should be created”. Global warming?
ALAN GRANT Chapel Street, Moniaive “How Scotland is defying the Donald” by Roseanna Cunningham is full of soundbites and wishful thinking (Perspective, 11 November). She thinks that Scotland’s miniscule 0.13 per cent of global emissions will help “to contain global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius”.
Her boast of Scotland’s climate leadership is laughable.
She thrills at the 23,000 delegates attending the UN Climate Change talks in Bonn, ignoring the colossal amounts of additional greenhouse gasses created.
She conveniently ignores the fact that 23 years of such conferences have only produced promises, except from Scotland and the rest of the UK, which put their economies on the backburner by introducing their legally binding Climate Change Acts.
She conveniently ignores that the promises made in Paris to reduce emission were not even half of what scientists say are essential.
Developing countries were bribed with promises of a share of a Green Climate Fund of $100 billion every year by 2020 if they signed up to the Paris Accord.
So far very little has been put into the fund as industrialised countries have second thoughts.
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