DR Charles Wardrop suggests (Letters, March 23) that billions of pounds are wasted on curbing CO2 emissions. In scientific terms the debate over climate change has been analogous to the cigarette smoking controversy, probably since both have tended to employ statistical arguments to relate cause to effect. In the case of smoking, the question has been whether or not inhalation over time could lead to lung tissue change and cancer.

In the case of climate change, it has been whether or not growing levels of atmospheric carbon could possibly equate to global warming and severe weather patterns. Few intelligent individuals would question the validity of the scientific evidence of the relationship between lung cancer and smoking. It is irrational to believe, as some do, that a handful of centenarians having survived into old age, despite having “smoked all their lives”, can nullify the science. Climate change denial is of this quality, involving claims by deniers based on the irrational and erroneous application of statistics.

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It is not difficult to ascertain that the relentless CO2 build-up on Earth, since the industrial revolution, is not associated with any known changes in Earth’s wobbling orbit around the Sun; nor with measureable alterations in the intensity of solar radiation; nor with any variations within the Earth’s core. So what is causing it? The only rational answer is that the prime mover of global warming must be “ancient sunlight” released by the burning of fossil fuels. While the direct heat released into the atmosphere from homes, power stations, factories and vehicles is negligible, the added carbon from ancient forests is certainly not.

Carbon dioxide wraps our planet in an invisible “blanket”. The science is well understood and confirms that, unfortunately, it is not invisible at infrared frequencies. Consequently, heat is trapped.

Any discussion that remains in relation to climate change revolves around the transition, which the human race must make, to achieve a fossil fuel-free mode of existence, before life for future generations of humans on this planet becomes impossible. Efforts by school children to raise awareness of the issue are by no means “an utter waste”, as Dr Wardrop asserts. The most effective route toward the avoidance of an uninhabitable planet in the not-too-distant future is the comprehensive adoption by human societies of eminently do-able renewable energy strategies.

Alan Sangster,

37 Craigmount Terrace, Edinburgh.

The science is clear. It is the increase in CO2 since the beginning of the industrial revolution that has driven climate change. The increase may only be five per cent of the total but that small increase means that the planet has moved from one that has had a relatively stable climate capable of supporting life, as we know it, for many thousands of years to one that is now bordering on instability with all the consequences of instability.

Whilst the UK’s current production at 1.3% looks small, we are still a nation that produces far more CO2 per head than the vast majority of countries on this planet. Indeed we are very close to the top of the per head table for producing climate destroying gases. When this is measured historically the production per head between the countries who led the industrial revolution and the countries most affected by climate change is even wider.

The billions of pounds spent curbing CO2 have not been wasted but show very clearly the true financial costs of unfettered pollution. Far from repealing the Climate Change Acts, we need strengthened legislation with further investments of billions of poubnds so that this planet and country survive in a future that may still be able to support life not too far removed from that which we at present enjoy. Hopefully our children and grandchildren will continue to enjoy the fruits of our efforts.

We cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand idly wishing away the chaos ahead urgent action is required.

Walter Attwood,

7 James Street,

Whins of Milton, Stirling.

IN pouring cold water (as it were) on the viability of hydrogen as an energy source, Richard Phillips bemoans the scientific illiteracy of the political class (Letters, March 28).

Famously, the novelist CP Snow did the same in his 1959 Rede Lecture The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.

Snow used to buttonhole his artistic friends at cocktail parties and ask them what the Second Law of Thermodynamics was.

He thought such a question was “equivalent” to “have you read a play by Shakespeare?”

Then, in his 1962 Richmond Lecture, Leavis rather savagely demolished Snow’s argument, not through scientific polemic, but as an act of literary criticism.

Mr Phillips writes that hydrogen does not occur naturally. That is not the case.

Hydrogen is the most “elemental” element in the universe.

He goes on to argue that “more energy must be generated by other means to manufacture hydrogen than can be recovered in its use”.

You can’t “generate” energy any more than you can “manufacture” hydrogen. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. That is the First Law of Thermodynamics.

I would also challenge Mr Phillips’s assertion that he suggestion that a major industry may be founded on hydrogen is fallacious.

He certainly makes a convincing argument that, to found such an industry would be very difficult, but he doesn’t really tell us why such difficulties should not be tackled and surmounted.

He points to the advantages of methane over hydrogen, but he doesn’t address the fact that the scientific community is warning us of the dire consequences of continuing to burn methane.

You may say that I’m being pedantic but the whole idea of renewables is to capture the energy that is all around us – in solar, wind, wave, and tide, store it, and use it in a way that does not destroy the planet.

If hydrogen is not the answer, then I think FR Leavis would have expected Mr Phillips to come up with an alternative.

Dr Hamish Maclaren,

1 Grays Loan,

Thornhill,

Stirling.