YOUR VIEWS: Greens MSP is so out of touch with real world
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I refer to the Ariane Burgess MSP article on Visitor Levy (Strathy 28 December) in which Ms Burgess says: “A well designed levy, at a modest rate, shouldn’t discourage visitors and should bring benefits for the tourism sector”.
Just as she did with the short-term lets legislation, Ms Burgess, doesn’t seem to understand the true effects of yet another damaging and ill-designed piece of Scottish Government legislation.
I wrote to her on several occasions with valid questions regarding her stance on short-term lets.
On each occasion she refused to answer my questions – not a good behaviour for a Highland MSP in refusing to engage with one of her constituents.
Ms Burgess justified licensing of short-term lets back in 2021 by warning that Highland communities risked being ‘hollowed out’ by short-term lets.
We are now seeing that this ill-designed short-term let legislation is now in fact a significant cause of local community ‘hollowing out’.
One example is that the number of B&Bs and guesthouses in Grantown has halved in the last year or so with the knock on negative effect on other local businesses.
Also, this Visitor Levy article was positioned beside an excellent column by David Richardson, regional development manager of the Federation of Small Businesses entitled, “Small businesses disappearing at an alarming rate of knots”.
Ignoring what is happening in the real world, Ms Burgess now wants to support the proposed Visitor Levy legislation as a means of improving the Highland economy and even the tourism sector.
What planet is this MSP on?
Firstly, the so-called Visitor Levy is in fact an accommodation levy with the administration costs hitting the small accommodation providers yet again disproportionately.
Statistics show that Scotland already taxes its visitors higher than most countries in the world – 140th out of 149 countries examined (bottom of the list being the highest taxing).
Yes, most of Europe has some kind of visitor levy, but in many cases this is voluntary and in most cases the VAT rate is lower, or deliberately lower for tourism accommodation.
There are many other real concerns on this flawed draft legislation.
There has been the usual Scottish Government consultation on the Visitor Levy.
Given the decisions made by the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, which Ms Burgess chairs, it is clear to me that the Scottish Government had already decided what it wanted to do, and the consultation process was treated as just something it legally needed to do.
Lastly, the Visitor Levy is generally supported by local authorities, including Highland Council.
I wonder why? Given the desperate financial position of local authorities, there will be huge temptation for them to merge some or all of the Visitor Levy funds into their general funds.
The legislation, as currently drafted, is very easy for councils to move the levy funds into non-tourism related project funds, or to replace funding that the local authority would have spent on projects.
Gordon Bulloch
The Dulaig
Grantown.
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‘I know first-hand as I tested annual CO2 in atmosphere of earth’
Neil Bryce (Strathy letter December 28) implies that the Climate Change Committee (CCC) found that the costs of net zero are ‘prohibitively high’.
Unfortunately, he gives insufficient reference to his source. But it appears to be the CCC’s Advisory Group on Costs and Benefits of Net Zero, which considered whether the costs would be prohibitively high.
It concluded that they would not but that ‘macroeconomic costs of deep decarbonisation may be small (or, indeed, negative for a fossil fuel importing country like the UK)’.
This led the CCC in 2019 to recommend that UK adopt net zero emissions by 2050 as a target.
Neil claims that temperature data goes back only 170 years.
But oxygen isotopes in ice cores give reliable evidence for temperatures thousands of years ago (NSIDC ‘What do ice cores reveal about the past?’).
He also claims that temperature data is distorted by the Urban Heat Island Effect.
This effect is well known and adjusted for using data from other locations. Furthermore, temperature data is collected from many thousands of land, sea and air locations.
Results from several independent research organisations are very similar despite using different methods (NASA ‘The Raw Truth on Global Temperature Records’).
So temperature records are far more reliable than what Neil Bryce urges us to take ‘with more than a pinch of salt’.
His claim that ‘Ice core data reveals that there is no correlation between temperature and elevated CO2’ is most surprising.
There has been extensive research into atmospheric CO2 and temperature, using ice core data among other sources, e.g. by the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility.
On this basis, NASA ‘Carbon Dioxide’ concludes that ‘Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the planet, causing climate change’.
I tested annual atmospheric CO2 and global temperature data between 1959 and 2021 and found a remarkably strong correlation of +0.95, meaning that 95 per cent of temperatures moved in line with CO2 in the atmosphere.
He is correct that there are complex causes of climate change, including our sun, the earth’s orbit, clouds and ocean currents.
Of course, the effect of climate change on clouds and ocean currents is part of this complexity.
But my correlation test is consistent with atmospheric CO2 being the predominant cause of global warming, since at least 1959. It supports NASA’s conclusion.
Dermot Williamson,
Kincraig.
* * *
Trip into Aviemore’s past
I thought some readers might be interested in this photograph which shows how Aviemore has changed since 1932.
It shows the centre of the village much of which is still given over to farmland as well as the main street – now Grampian Road – with St Andrew’s Church clearly visible.
Even when I came here in 1956 it was just a small village, and the primary school was at the Rothiemurchus Visitor Centre.
Obviously, the initial expansion was due to the development of the skiing.
Ray Sefton
Aviemore.
* * *
As far from reality as possible by denying climate emergency
I note that Neil Bryce describes himself and your other contributor, Charles Wardrop, as ‘climate realists’ (Letters, 3rd January).
He then goes on to make several false claims that show him to be far from reality as far as climate issues are concerned.
Mr Bryce repeats Mr Wardrop’s false claim that “human activities contribute four per cent” of the CO2 in the atmosphere.
The truth is that before around 1750AD, atmospheric CO2 had remained fairly constant for several thousand years, at around 280ppmv, (evidence from ice cores).
CO2 levels then started to increase and have now reached 420ppmv, due mainly to burning of fossil fuels. Records of the amount of fossil fuels burnt show that such burning released more than enough CO2 to the atmosphere to account for all of the increase, with the oceans and terrestrial biosphere absorbing the excess CO2.
That c.50 per cent increase from c.280 to 420ppmv since 1750AD was entirely due to human activity, meaning that about one third of the CO2 in the atmosphere now is due to human activity.
Mr Bryce’s figures refer to annual changes but are incomplete and misleading.
Due to seasonal changes such as spring growth of plants that absorb CO2 and autumn rotting of leaves that releases CO2, the earth does ‘breathe’ in and out during a year.
According to NASA, the Earth breathes out 210 billion tonnes of carbon per year and humans emit 9 btC/yr. Those are the figures to which Messrs Wardrop and Bryce refer – natural about 96 per cent, human about 4 per cent.
But they omit to mention that the Earth breathes in 215 btC/yr, with the balance of 4 btC/yr remaining in the atmosphere.
The NASA figures confirm that the human contribution from fossil fuel burning has unbalanced the pre-1750AD equilibrium, causing CO2 to accumulate both in the atmosphere, the oceans and in soils and vegetation on land.
Mr Bryce is also wrong to claim that ‘ice core data reveals that there is no correlation between temperature rise and elevated CO2’ as is obvious from the famous Vostok core here: http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/vostok_temperature_co2.png
Mr Bryce claims ‘we are still transitioning out of an Ice Age’, but that is only because of human CO2 emissions.
In the absence of those emissions, natural factors (mainly orbital changes) would have caused the Earth to continue very slowly to cool and would have led to another glaciation in perhaps 50,000 years. (Nature, Ganopolski et al, 2016)
Mr Bryce repeats the old canard about the urban heat island effect: something well understood and accounted for in surface temperature series. If in doubt, consult the graph of ocean heat content at NOAA, which shows continuous warming.
Mr Bryce is not a ‘climate realist’. He is someone, like Charles Wardrop, who repeats ridiculous internet myths and falsehoods, all of which have been debunked numerous times.
Roy Turnbull
Nethy Bridge.
* * *
Just think what else could get achieved with net zero funds
“I’ll cut taxes by curbing welfare”, says Mr Sunak (Sunday Telegraph, 7th January).
Reducing our tax burden can stimulate prosperity but expenditures on perverted environmentalism can not, other than that of the usually foreign manufacturers and the merchants of products catering for the essentially needless worries of climate alarmists.
No doubt some of the money intended for welfare support goes to waste but the huge sums the UK spends in the vain hope of our influencing the climate is virtually all wasted – much of it damaging the land as well as hitting our pockets.
The case for future abnormal climate dangers is not proven.
There is no evidence at all that de-carbonisation could help to stabilise the world’s climate.
Consider the land used up by windmills (turbines) and their powerlines and the vast arrays of solar panels. These take up huge areas otherwise good for farming and/or tourism.
Remember the windmills’ avian wildlife slaughter, the pressure from climate zealots to curtail meat eating, the costs and fire risks of electric cars, the costly switch to domestic warmth from air heaters and the attempted prevention of mining for fossil fuels.
Surely curtailment of expenditures on all that nonsense would be a better basis for tax reductions.
Genuine, useful environmentalism should realistically be concerned mainly with our infrastructure – buildings, roads (including potholes) and minimising avoidable pollution of the air.
We cannot usefully influence the local or global climate, so why throw money at it– more than £3 trillion, or £70,000 to £140,000 yearly per household for ‘net zero’ by AD2050!
A wasted effort, the lot of it, which could otherwise be put to useful purposes!
Charles Wardrop,
Perth.
