DB Watson (Letters, May 20) identifies such a serious issue that it deserves front page headlines. The public cannot be expected to understand the complex engineering dynamics required to ensure a reliable electricity supply but they have an absolute right to be provided with the unembellished truth.

Unfortunately, our politicians abhor the truth because it makes them unpopular. What happens when we no longer have Torness and Hunterston? As Mr Watson points out, wind cannot deliver the reliable constant electrical energy we need. It is an important contributor to a green future, but not a solution. We need a balanced mix of generation resources and there is no evidence that our Scottish Government appreciates the serious risks of not planning and implementing an energy strategy which acknowledges this.

Scotland, contrary to the SNP’s claims, will never be the “Saudi Arabia of green energy”. While very important, our small physical geography cannot deliver the necessary hydroelectricity capacity to compensate for wind’s deficiencies and hydrogen production using surplus wind energy, albeit feasible, would require huge capital expenditure to install the required storage and transport infrastructure.

This means that electrical energy will become very much more expensive in the future. A grim outlook for a small windswept, cool, damp country in the North Atlantic. The upside is that the challenges could deliver opportunities for our innovative engineers and entrepreneurs. But that challenge has to be fully described by Government and publicised by the media and not by the self-serving interests of Scottish Renewables.

To succeed we need to face up to the truth now or we will fail with dire consequences.

Norman McNab, Killearn.

CLIMATE GOALPOSTS BEING MOVED

I WOULD like to add my own thoughts to Martin Redfern's letter (May 20) on the COP26 Glasgow climate conference. In the run-up to the 2015 COP21 Paris climate conference the media was very optimistic. The French foreign minister said we had 500 days to avoid climate chaos. By the end of the conference the delegates were all applauding each other over what they had purportedly achieved.

But within a couple of years it began to unravel, because most countries weren't hitting their Paris climate goals and environmental groups claimed that Paris didn't go far enough anyway. The goalposts on when we are going to have climate chaos were moved to 2030.

We can already see the same beginning to happen with COP26.

The public will wake up to this one day (in the dark of course).

Geoff Moore, Alness.

* THE urgency of climate change is something we should all be concerned about. But Martin Redfern belittles this massive issue by trying to score political points.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves of the importance of COP26, world leaders coming to Glasgow to discuss the future of climate change and the impact it is already having on our world, Scotland included. Yet offers of assistance in organising the event as the host nation have been refused by the UK Government.

Mr Redfern can’t have it both ways. He clearly wants Scotland to remain part of the UK, but does not want Scotland to have a voice on such a major global issue and on such a global event being held in Scotland.

Catriona C Clark, Falkirk.

WHY DO WE NEED AIRCRAFT CARRIERS?

IT beats me how Commodore Stephen Moorhouse can consider the Royal Navy to be “Premier League” when its star player, HMS Queen Elizabeth, doesn’t even have enough American-made British-owned warplanes of its own or enough support craft to allow it to fulfil its designated role ("Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier makes unscheduled stop in home port", The Herald. May 20). The fact that the type of plane it carries are so expensive to fly that the Yanks are about to drop them altogether seems to have escaped him.

Being an island, the UK itself is the perfect defensive aircraft carrier, so one has to ask why the UK needs this type of offensive weapon platform at all. What assets does the UK taxpayer have in the Far East that we need to be able to protect? Who are we going to fight against on the other side of the world?

In common with our nuclear weapons systems this outdated redundant capacity of the Royal Navy is just part of the Establishment power-trip, and yet another way of taking some of your and my wages and putting it in the pockets of the already rich. Roll on independence.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

WE SHOULD RETURN TO TWO VERDICTS

I SEE that the campaign to remove the not proven verdict from Scottish law rumbles on ("Demand to axe ‘not proven’ verdicts", The Herald, May 19).

Whilst accepting that convictions for rape are low, I don't think tinkering with or skewing the system will help. Rape has always been a very difficult case to prove and I suspect that the number of not guilty verdicts would increase if not proven was abolished.

Given that a number of folk found guilty are innocent and some who are guilty are found not guilty, might I suggest we do away with those verdicts and return to the case being found proven or not proven?

Richard Gault, Dunoon.

POOCH WITH THE HOOCH

I HOPE that the news that a cocker spaniel has been recruited to help with quality control at Grant’s Whisky distillery in Girvan, ("Meet Rocco ... distillery’s sniffer spaniel who reports to Mr Wooff", The Herald, May 20 ), will validate oppressed husbands far beyond the bounds of that lovely wee seaside town, when they claim “just a wee snifter”, or “a hair of the dog”, as man’s best friend.

R Russell Smith, Largs.