YOUR VIEWS: Global warming is a very real emergency
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Correspondent Paul Aarden complains of ‘more than a little confusion’ about net zero (Strathy, October 23).
This is caused by deniers of mainstream climate science who spread misinformation in Strathy letters.
I clarify here the most basic fact, that global warming is happening.
World average temperature was relatively stable since the last ice age until the Industrial Revolution.
Our climate has been relatively stable in the past 11,000 years, with some minor ups and downs such as the Mini-Ice Age. This stable climate allowed mankind to develop agriculture, to build societies and to create civilisation.
But since the Industrial Revolution, particularly since 1900, the world has warmed faster than in the past 2,000 years, reaching today 1.2 C warmer than in 1850, the warmest for the past 11,000 years.
Average world temperatures since the year 0 are shown well in the chart SPM.1 ‘Human influence has warmed the climate at a rate unprecedented in at least the last 2000 years’, which you can find at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/summary-for-policymakers.
The fact of global warming is beyond doubt in established climate science (UK Met Office HADCRUT, EU’s Copernicus app-c3s-global-temperature-trend-monitor’, UN’s IPCC 2023 ‘AR6 Synthesis Report’, US NASA ‘Climate Change’, to name just a few authorities).
We know this fact of global warming from direct measurement with thermometers since around 1850.
Earlier temperatures are reconstructed from good evidence, such as tree rings that show how fast a tree has grown and when.
Antarctic and Greenland ice caps give strong evidence from longer ago: thickness of ice layers and air bubbles trapped in ice cores tell us about the climate and what was growing in the world; they are dated from their depth in the ice and from isotope dating.
Glaciers and geology add further information. This evidence is not restricted to urban weather stations as claimed by Neil Bryce (Strathy, October 2).
Dermot Williamson
Kincraig.
* * *
Striking a balance with the teachings of Bible
I fear that Jim MacEwan may have misunderstood and misapplied the sentence of my Thought for the Week that he quoted in his letter last week.
The ethical teaching of Jesus and the Scriptures – there is no conflict between the two – includes the commandments both to love our neighbour and to be holy in all our conduct.
Jim MacEwan is quite right to emphasise that Christians should excel in loving all our neighbours – all of them.
This involves caring equally for those of colour and of other religions, for those suffering any kind of abuse or rejection.
It also means showing Christ’s love, as we have opportunity, to murderers, adulterers, sex workers, those in homosexual or lesbian relationships, as well as criminals, convicted drug addicts, divorced people – in other words (the list is endless), all people, despite any sinful situation they may be in.
We are to love them all. “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Such people are our neighbours – and we ourselves should ever be repentant, mindful of our own sins.
But Jesus’ first commandment was to love God with all our heart, and he explicitly taught that if we love him, we will keep his commandments: this demands our commitment to holy living, and holy living includes how we conduct our sexual lives – according to God’s commandments.
We do not love God if we persist in a sinful life-style. We do not love God if we alter his holy requirements.
Church leaders need therefore faithfully to uphold the biblical standards of sexual morality – over against the permissiveness of our liberal society.
If church leaders don’t do that, they sin! We preachers have no right to alter God’s moral truth.
So the biblical balance – so hard to maintain! – is to hold to both extremes: on the one hand we must show love and care and consideration in acting for the good of all people, whatever their religion or life-style.
And, on the other hand, we must resist the temptation to adapt the high moral call of our Maker because of the pressure of an “evil generation”.
Rather we must be faithful to call sin what God calls sin; and we do this out of love for God, which is the highest ethical principle of all.
And let us remember that while Jesus welcomed sinners of all types, he transformed them into saints!
Clive Every-Clayton
King Street
Kingussie.
* * *
Thanks for repairs at the Abernethy Old Kirk car park
Following my recent request published in your newspaper for the car park between the Old Kirk in Nethy Bridge and Castle Roy to be improved, I am happy to say that it has had a bit of an improvement with some hardcore spread over it.
I don’t know who did that but hope whoever it was, they may see my letter here conveying our gratitude and thanks.
All we need now is for the wrecked wall to be repaired. Please?
Eric Hart
Secretary of Abernethy Old Kirk Association
Nethy Bridge.
* * *
Halloween night was ‘dino-mite’!
Halloween in Grantown is always a special occasion but it seems that this year was busier than ever.
We lost count of the amount of children, and in some cases, guardians, who visited us on the night. A conservative estimate would be about 120 callers.
We would like to highlight the fact that each and every child was delightful.
They all had a joke (some funnier than others).
They made a huge effort with their costumes and face paints.
It makes us want to ‘up our game’ next year to provide a spookier experience.
Throughout the evening all the children were polite and well behaved and therefore a credit to their parents and local schools.
The best costume award goes to the five dinosaurs. Unfortunately one was too busy to pose for this photograph.
Alick and Karen Morrison
Seafield Avenue
Grantown.
* * *
Flying Scotsman accident little to do with heritage railway staff concerns
I AM writing in reference to the Strathspey Railway staff ‘walking out in a huff’ said by Pete Waterson (Letters, Strathy), and as one of those staff who have felt the need to leave.
The Flying Scotsman incident had little to nothing to do with anything.
The meeting raising concerns of the staff and volunteers held last month at the Cairngorm Hotel in Aviemore was arranged prior to the accident, and the letter written even longer before that.
All due to factors outlined in the letter of no confidence delivered to the directors of the Strathspey Railway Company, as can be seen in the original article in the Strathspey.
The RAIB is in fact planning to launch an investigation into senior management after their original investigation into the Flying Scotsman incident.
Name and address supplied.
* * *
Look after our lovely Grantown
With Grantown Community Council going into abeyance, we have lost the organisation who had the power to safeguard the well-being of the townsfolk.
When you raise concerns through the correspondence columns of the Strathy you are hopeful that someone in authority will read them and investigate on your behalf.
These few lines of doggerel might jolt someone’s memory but when you lose the voice of a locally-elected authority, you may well be taking up just a lost cause. Here’s hoping it’s not the case:
Our bus shelter is worse for wear,
An ugly sight in the Grantown Square,
In desperate need of instant repair.
The bus company don’t really care.
The parking spaces are causing concern.
Will Highland Council never learn?
A danger to those of older age,
While walking sticks are raised in rage.
For dial-a-bus there is no hope.
No parking space outside the Coop.
The trip across a busy road’s
Not easy, lugging a heavy load.
So who will raise their voice for us?
A cosy shelter for the bus!
Remove the lines in Grantown Square
For dial-a-bus, if you really care.
I have my doubts that help will appear.
No-one will help, it’s pretty clear.
So prepare yourself in this time of despair:
Concerns prevail in Grantown Square.
Leonard Grassick
Coppice Court
Grantown.
* * *
Giving oxygen to the conspiracy theorists in Strathy’s columns
I SINCERELY hope that readers will not have agreed with the Strathy’s editorial (Strathy letters, November 2) that celebrated the letters page discussion of climate change.
Was it desirable when considered medical scientific judgment of the safety of the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine was ‘balanced’ by the BBC and other media outlets by highlighting Dr Andrew Wakefield’s vehement assertion of the link between autism and the vaccine?
Or would it be reasonable to accord the same degree of credibility to creationism and the theory of evolution?
Or would there be sense in giving a platform to flat Earthers or folk who deny that men really did land on the moon?
The vast weight of evidence of thousands of scientists across the globe confirms the reality of man-made climate change.
Of course science doesn’t assert absolute certainty but surely those conspiracy theorists that bombard the Scottish media with their arrogant certainties should not be so readily entertained.
And in addition, what specific relevance have their notions to Badenoch and Strathspey?
Dick Webster
Campbell Crescent
Kingussie.
* * *
Paying dearly for the cost of pursuing Net Zero unlike the East
ALTHOUGH one can be suffocated by a very gross excess of carbon dioxide (CO2), growers of plants in greenhouses artificially double or treble its atmospheric concentration.
Thereby, their crops’ proliferative growth is optimised.
CO2 ‘greens’ planet Earth.
However, climate change alarmists such as Al Gore, Greta Thunberg and several of your correspondents, regard man-made CO2 as guilty of promoting adverse climate changes, superimposed on nature’s normal climate variability.
In fact, the evidence against CO2 is unsound.
It depends, essentially, on dud computer programs fed dud data. There is no evidence that any reduction in CO2 output could offset any harmful climatic or weather events.
Most of the world’s man-made CO2 is emitted from nations like China and India, dead set against meaningful decarbonisation-net zero.
There is an impractical suggestion that CO2 should, if possible, be removed from the atmosphere.
However, if its concentration could be cut from a present 420 parts per million to, say, 160 ppm, all vegetation and, ultimately, we would die because of failure of plant photosynthesis, essential for life.
Why, then, are we accepting UN guidelines to decarbonise?
For the UK, the monetary costs, quoted by ex-PM Theresa May, will be at least, £3 trillion to £4 trillion by 2050.
Huge societal disruption is an additional, terrible cost. We are paying for it here already by aiming for ‘net zero’.
Our share of the planet’s man-made CO2 output is about one per cent. Therefore, it would clearly be prudent and realistic to opt out.
Germany and several other European nations are already starting to quit, disgusted by the costs and sceptical about any benefit from net zero.
Most Eastern countries, despite releasing more than 80 per cent of the world’s man-made CO2, have never genuinely opted in.
Why on Earth is the UK following the UN’s ruinous and futile decarbonisation diktat?
Charles Wardrop
Viewlands Rd West
Perth.
