Lessons to be learned on lights

WHAT a disaster! War Weekend, one of the busiest weekends of the year, and the traffic lights – Pickering is a one-light town – are out of action. The result is that traffic flows better than it has done in years. The A169 roundabout is not permanently blocked by vehicles attempting to enter A170 Hungate. All’s well with the world. Not so now, they’ve put in temporary lights and we are back to the usual congestion. How did that happen?

Pitfalls of CCS

From: Andrew Staniforth, Neill Road, Sheffield.

YOUR article uses the bewildering phrase “carbon capture “ for a proposed process which may end in profound regret for future generations (Yorkshire Post, October 16). It is carbon dioxide which they are wanting to put into storage, not carbon and that in the long term will lead to a noticeable depletion of atmospheric oxygen too. It might be better to wait until catalytic processes are developed to change the emmissions back into combustible materials to be recycled rather than tinker too much with the Earth’s air (or at least let plants have a nibble at it in the meantime). Also is it only carbonaceous waste which is being tackled or are they going to scrub out sulphurous and nitrous components too?

Fabulous ferns

From: William Snowden, Dobrudden Park, Baildon Moor, Baildon.

IN his latest missive about moorland ferns (Yorkshire Post, October 15) Ken Cooke posts that I have apparently avoided being “poisoned by bracken” by “not...eating it”. Most reassuring.

My garden bench is swathed in ferns, Mr Cooke, but I would no more eat them than I would the fly agaric mushroom. Nor would I rustle up a ready meal of stir-fried ladybirds and cinnabar moths, garnished with dry-leaved ragwort, and flavoured with the dark juice of belladonna.

Ferns have survived over 300 million years, and are one of the most primitive plants on Earth. They should be admired and respected, not persecuted and poisoned by neurotic “conservationists”!