IT is not clear from Ian Moir’s letter (August 11) whether or not he is advocating the abandonment of renewables in Scotland because he believes that too little electricity is used to justify low-carbon developments. If so, it is a rather parochial line to follow. At the global level there is no alternative to the renunciation of fossil fuels by the developed world as recommended in the Paris accord.
Global warming is no longer a scientific obsession but is having real effects. The year 2016 saw record Arctic land temperatures, record temperatures for lakes around the world, record levels of serious drought globally and a record low value for the mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which has the capacity to contribute a disastrous seven metres (23 feet) to sea level rise. Thousands of acres of permafrost have been detected from space burning in what appears to be Greenland’s biggest fire on record. The massive fires release large amounts of greenhouse gases and speed up the melt of the ice sheet and the carbon-rich permafrost.
Greenland is almost entirely covered in an enormous ice sheet but grassy, carbon-rich peatlands along the coast are heating up and drying out. The fires have been identified as peatland fires fuelled by methane. Peat fires are difficult to stop – rather like quenching a gas flame without turning off the gas – so they burn until all the organic matter has turned to ash.
Any debate that remains must revolve around the implementation of the transition, which the human race must make, to achieve a fossil-fuel-free mode of existence, before the survival of future generations of humans on this planet becomes impossible. The available evidence points to a wholesale adoption of renewable energy sources, backed by massive energy storage techniques, as possibly the only effective route forward.
Alan J Sangster,
37 Craigmount Terrace, Edinburgh.
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