WITH regard to your correspondence on climate change (Letters, November 23), three years ago President Obama declared that the Paris climate jolly may have been a turning point for our planet. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he, his forte being rhetoric rather than science.
A new report on the results of the Paris accord show that none of the cuts in CO2 emissions promised by the 200-plus attending nations has happened and the leading industrialised nations have quietly binned the idea.
"Climate Transparency reports that emissions are up in most of the G20 (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia) except the US (fracking) and the UK (de-industrialising).
President Trump was right to pull out of this farce for there's a far better way to deal with the mild climate change we face than trying to decarbonise every economy on the planet. Humanity adapts so well to global warming we should just deal with any change that occurs.
Rev Dr John Cameron,
10 Howard Pace, St Andrews.
CLARK Cross (Letters, November 19) remarks that "carbon capture and storage [CCS] has yet to appear despite billions being spent on research".
As with other things that are from time to time reinvented at great and needless expense, CCS was used successfully in the 19th century, when steam trams were required by law to "consume their own smoke". (They had also to screen their reciprocation motion work to avoid alarming horses.)
Smoke was eliminated mainly by directing "secondary air" over the incandescent mass, whereby the smoke was indeed "consumed" – an effective and economical expedient. However, the dense smoke inevitably produced for a short time after firing was exhausted to a smoke condenser, and the soot thus formed was dumped at the end of the day’s work. Kindergarten technology which could easily be scaled up to power station requirements. But as with battery-electric vehicle technology – also well advanced more than a century ago – researchers are doing very well for themselves by refraining from discovering anything that would be inconvenient for those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Your correspondents rightly ridicule our Government’s ostensible efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Drawing up plans to ban coal fires – and no doubt in due course, birthday-cake candles – while the construction of bigger roads and expansion of air traffic continues apace, makes one think of gnats and camels.
Robin Dow,
40 Mount Pleasant Road, Rothesay, Isle of Bute.
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