THE Climate emergency now figures as a critical consideration in the election hit-list.

Yet, after the recent climate debate on Channel 4, of the attendant significant parties it was clear that something was missing, and not just Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

What is missing is an Action Plan, an idea which should be embraced by all parties, to guarantee political co-operation.

It is axiomatic in the commercial world that you plan ahead for the short, medium and long term, setting objectives and goals and the mechanisms to achieve these; shared with your colleagues, shared with your workforce after consultation, engendering support for your plan for a viable commercial future.

Where is the Action Plan, or an attempt at one, to address climate heating?

Where is the written narrative provided by accredited environmental scientists, setting out the issues with clarity, supported by explicit fact and how we should or could achieve the necessary reductions in harmful emissions by the time frame?

Where is the socio-economic analysis assessing the economic impact of the measures we know are needed, and how we will ameliorate their impact on, for example, jobs, through the necessary diversification from using fossil fuel energy?

Are we too frightened to contemplate evolving such a plan made available to all?

Let us stop talking about what we will do, promise to do.

It is too piecemeal, too political, and not cross-party.

Let’s have the written narrative complied by accredited environmental scientists in association with economists, other academics and professionals, then lay it out and publicise it.

Ralph Green,

Advocacy,

Glasgow.

YOU report (“Thousands left without heating on coldest night”, The Herald, December 2) the plight of the folk in 8,000 chilly (-9 deg. C) houses in central Scotland with a prolonged mains fault in gas transmission.

They should think again about the proposed ending of domestic gas supplies as just one part of decarbonisation to help fight climate changes.

Although electric heaters were offered to elderly or sick customers and those with young children, failures in electricity supply will deny that relief.

Visits by Scottish Gas Networks staff to switch off supplies to every affected house will compound the angst and “inconvenience”.

Clearly, imminent reductions in our national electricity generation will handicap mitigation of the multiple bad effects of cutting CO2 output- “zero carbon”.

Anyway, the negligible greenhouse gas release by the United Kingdom means that we cannot help any local or global climate by decarbonising.

The icicles hanging by the Ross fountain statue in Princes Street in Edinburgh demonstrate the cold snap, but, then, that is out-of doors!

Dr Charles Wardrop,

Perth.

THE Herald has recently highlighted the risk to “famous sites” from rising sea levels.

In an earlier article it was reported that the “tipping point” in terms of the global mean temperature may be have to be revised from the current 5C down to as little as 1 or 2C, whereby greenhouse gases will increase at a much higher rate and sea levels will rise sooner than the current predictions, placing many areas at increased risk from coastal flooding.

This in turn increases the risk of inland flooding due to the effect on river levels, particularly at times of high rainfall.

In this situation many modern developments will be critically affected.

The Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow springs to mind as a recent development that would be in that category.

It may already be at risk as a combination of weather and tidal factors, which led to widespread flooding in the 1990s and could happen again in time, even as things stand.

Duncan Miller,

Lenzie.

SCIENTISTS at the US research group, Climate Central, are saying that famous landmarks in Scotland could be lost to climate change within the next 30 years.

The Forth Bridge, Glasgow Airport, the Kelpies, Dumbarton, Clydebank and other areas could be submerged, according to Climate Central.

For numerous years scientists, who are all paid their more-than-generous salaries from the public purse, have foreseen the Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding to wreak havoc but their dire predictions have never happened.

Remember Al Gore, the former American vice-president under Bill Clinton, who said the oceans would rise by 20 feet “in the very near future”?

That was in 2006 and we are still waiting for the remaining 19 feet, 11.7 inches.

Scientists who make these predictions should be required to pay for a performance bond and if the predicted event does happen then they forfeit the money.

That would stop their alarmism and bring some sanity to the present climate hysteria.

Clark Cross,

Linlithgow.