The ancient Fife tsunami, our place in the universe, Scotland’s energy policy and the cost of the new Forth crossing are tackled by today’s letters.
Fife tsunami claims lacked scientific basis Sir Your news feature Evidence for Scotland’s forgotten tsunami (March 18) is likely to alarm residents over a wide area of Fife, who may connect Mr Lawrie’s statements on an ancient tsunami with a possible future hazard.
The tsunami he describes did happen, around 8000 years ago and is certainly not forgotten.
Evidence stretches from the far north of the Shetland Islands to the Humber and maybe further south.
Our own students have field trips to study its deposits near Montrose and Leuchars and to read authoritative scientific papers which reconstruct its timing and geographical extent.
Mr Lawrie’s statements exaggerate the tsunami extent inland and the possible heights reached.
The sands he describes around the Howe of Fife have nothing to do with the ancient tsunami. They were deposited much earlier by less dramatic processes.
The tsunami sands deposited following the Storegga landslide are, in the vast majority of sites, often no more than a few tens of centimetres thick and occur only up to 10 metres above the contemporary coastline, with the exception of the event in Shetland.
In Fife, evidence for the tsunami can be found in the valley of the Eden as far as Dairsie, around Tentsmuir forest and within sediments along the coast near Elie.
It is dangerous to speculate so wildly without reference to well-established scientific knowledge.
(Dr) Sue Dawson.(Dr) Martin Kirkbride.Geography and Environmental Science School of the Environment,University of Dundee.
Dismal life without creator
Sir I watched another episode of Wonders of the Universe, by Professor Brian Cox, and, although fascinated, the programme left me feeling vaguely depressed. Professor Cox stressed that humans are so infinitesimally small and insignificant compared with the vastness and complexity of the universe.
He spoke about how the universe had developed from cosmic dust into the ordered arrangements of planets and stars it is today.
What was missing was an explanation, or even the question, about how the materials which made up the chaotic cosmos came to be there in the first place.
He also stressed how inevitable the changes were and how even our sun will one day blow up and disappear. It is very interesting, but, without faith in a creator God, it is also depressing.
If everything is so fore-ordained and we humans are so insignificant and powerless, what is the point of all our striving and struggling if we have no belief in a benevolent creator and man’s predominant place in his creation?
Without God and our faith, it seems futile. Others are welcome to their atheism.
I reckon I am more fortunate with my faith.
George K. McMillan.5 Mount Tabor Avenue,Perth.
Scotland’s energy options
Sir I must respond to Dave Dempsey’s defence of the nuclear power industry (March 18). I did not say I was blindly against nuclear power, simply I was against blindly optimistic devotees of the industry.
My letter was to point out the scale of the risks when the unforeseen happens.
Certainly there are deaths from coal or other forms of generation but is Mr Dempsey seriously equating the devastation caused by Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima with emissions from Longannet?
Kirkcaldy, Dalgety Bay and St Andrews lie within the 50-kilometre safety zone around Torness and, by the way, residents might care to look at their house insurance policies to check cover.
Some countries may well build nuclear stations if they have few other options.
Scotland is in the happy position of having sufficient alternatives.
Why has not a single new nuclear power station been seriously proposed, in the recent licensing round by promoted by the Westminster Government?
Could it be that truly fail-safe design, decommissioning, storage and reparation costs must be met in full rather than being subsidised by the taxpayer?
Ian Chisholm.87 Lady Nairn Avenue,Kirkcaldy.
SNP’s figures do not add up
Sir Travelling the world as a merchant seaman, I saw many wonders but none impressed me more than the Panama Canal. For my money, it is the world’s greatest-ever civil engineering project.
The existing canal has two lanes with sets of locks 1050-feet long by 100-feet wide at the Pacific and Atlantic sides.
A new expansion contract is adding a third lane with locks 1400-feet long by 180-feet wide. These will connect to the existing channel system through many miles of new navigation lanes, thereby almost doubling the size of vessels and volume of shipping able to use the canal.
Excavation of the new navigational channels for larger ships is a massive task and will necessitate raising the level of the vast Gatun Lake to supply the additional 137 million gallons of water per day the new system will need to raise and lower the ships.
The cost of the new millennium’s largest civil engineering project? Between £9.3 billion and £15.5 billion.
This price for extensive and ground-breaking work in hostile jungle and swamp conditions for a 48-mile, nine-hour transit between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans is not a great deal more than the £6.6 billion price quoted by John Swinney at Holyrood for tunnelling under the one-mile wide river Forth, which would take about 10 minutes to navigate.
Transport Scotland’s estimates for tunnelling given by John Swinney would not be out of place in a fantasy by Walt Disney.
So how can we have confidence in the similarly extortionate new bridge estimates he has now given to the Scottish Parliament?
Tom Minogue.94 Victoria Terrace,Dunfermline.
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