COLIN Weatherley (Letters, October 14) seems to think that anyone who sees the necessity of fossil fuels to provide a stable generating system must be in the pay of the oil industry.

Would that it were so, it would supplement my meagre pension.

He also thinks that science is some sort of dogma handed down on tablets of stone from Mount Sinai. My personal experience of climate scientists, including those who write for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is instead of a variety of opinion adhering to different degrees to the supposed dogma that Mr Weatherley quotes. That ability to criticise and assess and form their own view is what generates scientific progress. Dogma would kill it stone dead.

Professor Tony Trewavas,

Scientific Alliance Scotland,

7-9 North St David Street,

Edinburgh.