Climate realities
What I find extraordinary, as I have done whenever I read similar anti-wind farm views, and particularly now, at a time when the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is being published, is the complete absence in these letters of any explicit acknowledgement that global warming is a real problem that requires real, difficult, decisions to be made.
Let us remember that the IPCC, providing advice to governments from the world community of climate scientists, warns that global warming threatens “severe, pervasive and irreversible” impacts and that The Scotsman assessment of the latest IPCC report stresses that “the renewable energy sector must be massively expanded”.
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Hide AdInstead, we read Cllr Cameron Rose, for example, complaining about the subsidies provided for wind farm developments, without any acknowledgement that a 2013 Overseas Development Institute report found that, globally, for every $1 (60p) used to subsidise renewable energy, $6 was used to subsidise fossil fuels, the latter to a total of $523bn (£312bn) a year in 2011.
Similarly, Dr McCormick repeats the false siren defeatism that there is nothing we can do, along with his straw- man reference to “controlling” climate by reducing CO2 emissions (when the advice of climate scientists is not about control, but merely reducing the human perturbations to climate).
Perhaps opponents to wind farm developments wonder why their complaints appear to fall on deaf ears.
They should consider how such complaints could be taken seriously when they appear to be at least partially motivated by the denial of the seriousness of anthropogenic global warming.
Divesting themselves of that error, acknowledging that we have a real serious problem with the climate that must be faced, may leave wind farm opponents with at least a credible platform upon which to build their case.
Roy Turnbull
Nethy Bridge
Invernessshire
I really rejoice when items promoting the interests of wind farmers – in this case your editorial (12 April) and Lesley Riddoch’s article (Perspective, 14 April) are published there is a bombardment from real people in your letters pages.
The SNP government and Scottish Renewables would be making a serious mistake to dismiss such contributions as being “hot air” (Ms Riddoch’s words) from a vocal minority.
They are but the tip of an enormous iceberg.
John Milne
Ardgowan Drive
Uddingston