WITH regard to Mr Brazier’s, (Letters, January 26), on wind power, his main point appears to be that we shouldn’t bother with clean, zero-carbon energy because there is no such thing as human induced climate change. 

This is an erroneous point of view that was buried for all time at the Paris COP21 in 2015. 

This conference negotiated the Paris Agreement, a global agreement on the reduction of climate change, the text of which represented a consensus of the representatives of the 196 parties attending it. 

If Mr Brazier disputes this 196-country consensus, he will have to produce better arguments.

There is no disagreement among climate scientists and the effect of greenhouse gas emissions is well known, well-documented and accepted, with none of the factors that he lists significant enough to produce the observed effects on global climate. 

As for falls in global temperatures, both NASA and NOAA agree that 2016 was the warmest year on record, only disagreeing on how many temperature records have been broken over the last few years. 

They also record that atmospheric CO2 is above 400 parts per million (ppm), on the way to 450 ppm which is thought likely to trigger extreme weather events across the world.

As for wind turbine output, no doubt Standard readers are grateful for the information that the wind does not blow steadily all the time. 

Mr Brazier will no doubt follow up with revelations about the intermittency of sunshine as well. 

The renewables industry did know about these things, which is why a mix of generation technologies is still required to power the UK and why a completely new storage industry is growing rapidly. 

However, as coal is the dirtiest fuel in common use, it is only right that these power stations are phased out first. 

Does Mr Brazier still want people to carry on with the dirty, dangerous business of coal-mining in the 21st century?

Fracking, which Mr B throws in at the end, is a dead-end technology, a pointless industrialisation of the countryside when we should be leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

BOB IRVING
Cotswold Green Party