Climate politicking
Kenny Macaskill talks of “shameful politicking hindering the fight against climate change”, but he is the one who should be ashamed.
He indulges in half-truths and poor science (The Scotsman 27 June). He uses the iconic image of a polar bear much as Al Gore did in 1990 with his discredited “Inconvenient Truth” to manipulate the public consciousness into the mistaken belief that they are symbolic of threatened extinctions due to climate change while he also links this image to the current heatwave, which he identifies as a climate phenomenon rather than just plain weather.
Mr Macaskill practices further deception by saying that man-induced sea level rise is inundating Jakarta in Indonesia. He concedes that unregulated water abstraction is causing subsidence but by inference he conveys the false message that the yearly 0.12 inch increase in water level is more serious than the 10-inch annual collapse of the land.
A similar deceit was also perpetrated by Mr Gore in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans when the principal reason for that disaster was subsidence due to the mass extraction of oil and gas.
Carbon dioxide is frequently and falsely portrayed as a pollutant. Only 4 per cent originates from human activities with the balance emanating from natural sources.
Mr Macaskill would do well to reflect that the relentless expanding pressures of the human population and inappropriate building as well as the reckless exploitation of resources (including lithium and cobalt from South America to Africa, essential for powering the electric car revolution) are an infinitely greater threat than this kindly trace gas, even if it reaches 450 parts per million.
NEIL J BRYCE Kale Valley, Morebattle, Kelso
Brexit and the man-made “global warming” saga appear to confirm that human beings are swayed by deep-seated belief rather than hard evidence.
I suppose we shouldn’t really be surprised, because anthropological evidence has long suggested that far from being truth-seekers we are geared for tribal harmony and social cohesion.
Scientists of my generation were profoundly influenced by the great physics teacher and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman. He said: “It doesn’t matter how beautiful the theory is, or the status of the person who dreamt it up – if its projections don’t agree with the facts it’s wrong and in that simple statement is the key to science.”
My scientific colleagues have huge reservations about agw; my co-religionists are true believers. After I was howled down yet again in a General Assembly climate “debate”, the late Laurence Whitley of Glasgow Cathedral playfully asked why I didn’t concentrate on more peripheral subjects such as the divinity of Christ. (REV DR) JOHN CAMERON
Howard Place, St Andrews