Letters: it isn’t climate change scientists who are the hysterics

Balance of power

Sir: Ross Clark sums up the problem with wind power (‘Storing up trouble’, 13 November). It is often inadequate or alternatively excessive, leading in the latter case to the ludicrous position of making payments to operators for producing nothing. A solution to the question of storing electricity to even out the peaks and troughs of wind power would clearly be of great benefit in our quest for net zero. Mr Clark does not appear to be keen on batteries, which make demands on our finite sources of rare metals and can be dangerously volatile. Pumped water storage has limited application.

What he did not mention was hydrogen. It should surely be possible to link wind turbines not only to the National Grid but also to a series of plants producing hydrogen by electrolysis which could use any excessive wind power and then be stored to replace the carbon-emitting fuel in gas-powered stations.

Sam Dunning

Guildford

97 per cent

Sir: The problem with Nigel Lawson’s view that the climate change ‘crisis’ is based on ‘mass hysteria’ and ‘ignorance’ (‘Stupid fuels’, 6 November) is that it casts the 97 per cent of climate scientists as the ignorant victims of mass hysteria. Although the 97 per cent figure (publicised by Nasa and based on a study by John Cook in 2013) has been contested, notably by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group funded by ExxonMobil, subsequent peer-reviewed studies have confirmed it. From which it follows that, despite being specialists in their field, nearly all climate scientists must either be too ignorant to understand the available data, or victims of ‘group think’ and mass hallucination.

On the other hand, it may be that the 97 per cent are right and the 3 per cent are wrong. The latter are not modern-day Galileos, but the beneficiaries of generous funding from the fossil fuels industry.