Energy debate; letters in the Dereham Times

Today's Dereham Times (10th July) carries 2 letters about energy supplies. Malcolm Heymer (of Wheatcroft Way, Dereham), replying to my letter printed last week, continues his ill-conceived argument that man-made global warming doesn't exist! Well I'm sorry to inform him that the OVERWHELMING weight of evidence and the broad scientific consensus says that IT DOES EXIST! Yes, there is an element of natural variations in temperature that Mr Heymer speaks of, but this is small compared to what we are facing as a consequence of man-made CO2 emissions!

Mr Heymer refers in his letter to a report by a group calling itself the "Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)". This is clearly intended to deceive many people because it could very easily be mistaken for a reference to the much more widely accepted UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) report (see http://www.ipcc.ch). Mr Heymer also appears to have been deceived by exaggerated predictions claiming that there are vast undiscovered reserves of finite resources like oil and uranium that will thrust the peak of these resources far off into the future! Maybe those reserves are out there somewhere! But who's to say we'll ever be able to find or extract them!!!

The logical thing is to plan based on the resources that we know (or can reasonably predict) that we've got! Regarding oil, the current evidence is that global production is coming to a peak, beyond which it will go into terminal decline. And this is happening at just the same moment that global demand for oil is sky-rocketing due to the growth of India and China (among others). This IS creating a widening gulf between supply and demand, leading to soaring oil prices which is exacerbating (if it didn't directly cause) the "credit crunch" and other economic instability.

The solution to all this is VERY obvious and relatively simple; we must rapidly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, particularly oil. I believe that through this we can build stronger, more robust local economies, stronger, healthier, friendlier local communities, and a nicer, healthier local environment. But having done a little web search for "Malcolm Heymer, Dereham", I've discovered that Mr Heymer is a very vocal climate change denier and a member of the car lobby, the "Association of British Drivers" (ABD). So I don't expect that he'll be convinced by any of this until long after the facts have been proved.

The other letter is Cllr Rupert Read's response to Malcolm Heymer's previous letter (printed 26th June), answering Mr Heymer's criticisms of Mr Read's previous letter (19th June). Mr Read (quite rightly in my view) dismisses Mr Heymer's argument for building new nuclear power stations to solve our "looming crisis in electricity generation" as economically unviable and physically dangerous (citing Chenobyl, and the modern terrorist threat).