Whilst agreeing with all that Christian Vassie wrote (Let’s tackle climate change because it’s hard, Letters, July 17) he omitted the overwhelming reason for tackling climate change. If we don’t, humanity is doomed.

In 1824, French mathematician Joseph Fourier first described how the atmosphere makes our planet habitable and French physicist Claude Pouillet added the numbers in 1827-30. However, it was American physicist Eunice Newton Foote whose paper to the Smithsonian Institute in 1856 described her experiments which directly demonstrated that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere would raise the temperature of our planet. Much later, in 1901, Swedish meteorologist Nils Gustaf Ekholm called that ‘The Greenhouse Effect’.

I left school in 1958 having studied maths, physics and chemistry and having learnt about The Greenhouse Effect. That same year the atmosphere monitoring station on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, was opened. Since then the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from 320 parts per million to 400 parts per million in 2018; an increase of 25 per cent in just 60 years. Mankind really faces an emergency.

Quentin Macdonald,

Church Lane, Nether Poppleton, York

Listen to astronauts about global warming

The council’s new Climate Change Scrutiny Committee chair Christian Vassie should consider inviting some Apollo astronauts for their opinions on global warming. Michael Collins, Charlie Duke and Walter Cunningham have well documented views. Prof Harrison Schmitt (the last man to walk on the moon) said in a resignation letter “the global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives”. How can Cllr Vassie, who as chair receives £5,200 p/a of council taxpayers’ money, persuade me the committee is not just another excuse to expand political interference? It is a waste of money and powerless to do anything other than virtue signalling.

The money would be better employed building up a war chest to fight the inevitable appeal by Barwood Land over the Askham Bog planning application. Imagine the council’s democratic decision being overturned by planning inspector sovereignty. That really would damage our environment.

Dr Scott Marmion,

Woodthorpe, York