Sturgeon has no right to donate Scots money to build her profile on world stage

In the longer term, there can be no doubt climate change will be a problem requiring urgent attention. I wonder, however, what right Nicola Sturgeon, attending the United Nations climate talks in Poland, has to donate £200,000 of Scottish taxpayers’ money “to help Marrakech prepare for climate change”? (report, 4 December).

It would seem the First Minister’s latest act of generosity to a foreign country or body is motivated by her need to look good on the world stage. She chooses to forget that, in Scotland, there is considerable poverty, with many Scots depending on food banks; with a health and education system urgently needing increased investment and an economy more or less at a standstill. That cash could pay for the hire of at least four more nurses or contribute a little to reimburse hard-pressed teachers for their purchase of essential items for school pupils.

Ms Sturgeon does not represent all Scots, merely those who support her obsession with Scotland becoming an independent country or SNP supporters who wish to remain in the EU.

SALLY GORDON - WALKER

Caiystane Drive, Edinburgh The costly climate alarmism conference in Poland headlined on the BBC news this week with a cataclysmal warning from veteran film producer David Attenborough. The broadcast, like the conference, was basically a propaganda exercise for the renewables lobby. Poland was castigated for relying on coal to generate electricity.

As I am writing to you now, on Monday evening, the GB National Grid Status shows electricity demand at 42GW of which gas is producing 50 per cent, nuclear 15 per cent, coal 11 per cent, wind 7 per cent and French nuclear 5 per cent. During February’s “Beast from the East” cold wave, coal stopped the grid crashing.

I will remind readers that the Institution of Engineers in Scotland has warned that closing coal-fired power stations like Longannet will make a black start of the grid when it crashes very problematic. Yet the UK Government plans to close our few remaining coalfired power stations.

Do we want a secure energy supply or do we want virtue signalling on a massive scale from an eco-elite ?

WILLIAM LONESKIE

Justice Park Oxton, Lauder Let’s put our climate in a historical context. Over the past 600 million years global temperatures ranged from 12 to 22 degrees C. Currently, we are at 14.5 degrees, that is, at the colder end of the range. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are now 406 parts per million, compared to the historical average of 2,000ppm when plants thrive.

From 1910 to 1940 global temperature increased by 0.4 degrees C. It fell between 1940 and 1970, creating panic about global cooling and dire warnings of a glacier one mile deep fronting the M4.

It warmed up again by 0.4 degrees from 1970 to 2000, so catastrophists shifted their alarm back to an impending meltdown inferno. Then temperatures remained basically flat for the next 18 years, so global warming was renamed climate change.

Meanwhile, GHG kept rising during the warming, the cooling and the pause, suggesting CO2 cannot be the only cause of climate change.

What will happen next? Who knows?

But I doubt Al Gore and the Greens do.

(REV DR) JOHN CAMERON

Howard Place, St Andrews