Letters: Global warming

Sir: Contrary to the claim by David Whitehouse (Extra, 5 December) that the sun could save us from global warming, the sun would have to go through an unprecedented decline in activity to significantly mitigate the warming that is projected from the continuing emissions of greenhouse gases.

While the sun has likely played a role, together with other natural influences, the recent assessment by the IPCC concluded that the increase in global surface temperatures over the past 50 years has been predominantly associated with increases in greenhouse gases, partially offset by other pollutants from human activities.

Solar activity, as measured by sunspots, peaked in the late 1950s, and has been fairly stable over the past 30 years. In addition, recent research suggests that volcanic eruptions may have as big or bigger influence on cooler periods, such as the so called "Little Ice Age", than solar activity.

Over the next century, warming from human-induced greenhouse gases is likely to dwarf any cooling from changes in the sun, even assuming that solar activity reduces to levels not seen for 400 years.

Dr Gareth S Jones

Dr Peter A Stott

Met Office Hadley Centre Exeter

Prison system fit for a banana republic

Sir: The Government has announced its plans to build super-size jails to cater for a prison population of 100,000. Based on the Californian prison industrial complex, the UK prison population has the potential to increase to north of 300,000. Your front page (6 December) highlights appalling statistics you would have expected from a banana republic.

Possible ideas could include: compulsory literacy and numeracy classes; limited internet access with emphasis on job training, particularly vocational trades, IT skills, music and drama; contact with victims via webcam and face-to-face meetings, and rehab to be compulsory for addicts.

All of the above would come at a cost but the UK has plenty of individuals who could provide such services. Also on this issue (as with transport, energy, defence, health and education) the Government should be adopting a 50-year plan rather than engaging in policies motivated to keep them in power for another five years.

Sean Gaughan

London SW11

Sir: The Independent's front page painted a depressingly clear picture of Britain's present approach to penal policy, including the shocking level of youth imprisonment. Punishing young people (especially young men between the ages of 16 and 24) with a prison sentence for relatively minor crimes devastates their futures.

Our research shows that 57 per cent of ex-prisoners seeking work say they have had difficulties because of their criminal records; 61 per cent re-offend within two years. Hardly any young people leaving prison have any work experience or qualifications; their trajectory towards a life in and out of prison is set. Building bigger prisons to accommodate them rather than tackling the root causes of their criminality is utterly misguided.

Instead of locking people up, the Government must offer vulnerable young people alternatives to crime and clear pathways into training and work. Appointing a Young Persons Minister to oversee the transition to adulthood of Britain's youngsters would be a massive first step. This government has made impressive strides when assisting children in their early years. It is time they began to help the lost generation; the alternative is a continuing tilt towards ever greater prison numbers.

Sukhvinder Stubbs

Chief Executive, Barrow Cadbury Trust, London W1

Sir: The Carter review and subsequent media coverage has almost completely ignored the collapsing state of many drug rehabilitation programmes in English and Welsh prisons.

These vital services are often shackled by administrative incompetence and political negligence. Prison doctors commonly do not have the time or resources to assess new inmates with drug problems properly when they enter custody, a period of serious risk for vulnerable offenders.

Many drug-dependent prisoners will be let down by underfunded and poorly staffed services that cannot cope with the large numbers in desperate need of their help.

But the problems facing rehabilitation programmes go far beyond those of funding. Many prisons are awash with illegal drugs, making it close to impossible to wean some prisoners off their habit. Medical records, the key tool for doctors, are poorly maintained and not transferred properly between prisons or from the community, and post-release monitoring services are patchy, at best.

Seventy per cent of prisoners enter custody with a drug problem. Many will leave with the same drug problem and go on to contribute to the 64 per cent who re-offend within two years. Building new prisons and tinkering with sentencing will not end this depressing cycle of wasted and damaged lives for the victims of crime and drug abuse.

Society and the prison system desperately need a radical and system-wide approach to the drug problem in our prisons. After this review we are, sadly, still waiting for this new beginning.

Dr Redmond Walsh

British Medical Association'scivil and Public Services Committee, London WC1

Sir: Doesn't anyone in government know anything about history, with Jack Straw announcing 9,500 more prison places? In 1895, a Royal Commission found that prison didn't work.

At a time of bread and water, flogging, the capstan and the treadmill, more than half of prisoners were there for re-offending; some had offended more than 10 times and still were back for more. Education is the answer for all but professional criminals. Literacy, skills, building self-confidence, support after release: that's where the money should go.

Ted Clark

Leamington Spa, Warwickshire

Forest people can save the forest

Sir: For decades, Guyana's indigenous peoples have been seeking rights to the traditional lands they occupy and use. It would therefore be surprising if they were happy about President Jagdeo's offer to place the country's forests under the control of a British-led international body in return for development aid ("Take over our rainforest", article, 24 November).

Guyana's forests have been inhabited and cared for by indigenous peoples for hundreds of generations. Under international law, and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Guyana voted to adopt, indigenous peoples have the right to own the lands, territories and resources, including the forests, which they traditionally occupy and use. Recent research from neighbouring Brazil shows that indigenous territories form the most effective barriers to deforestation. The incidence of both deforestation and forest fires is many times lower inside indigenous reserves than in other areas of the Amazon basin.

In early 2006, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed grave concern at Guyana's failure to respect indigenous land rights. If Guyana is really serious about protecting its rainforest it should recognise indigenous peoples' land-ownership rather than hand over the forest to foreigners.

Jean la Rose

Amerindian Peoples Association of Guyana, Stephen Corry, Director, Survival International, Marcus Colchester, Director, Forest Peoples Programme, London, EC1

Misguided plans to tilt US election

Sir: When Johann Hari ("The plot to rig the 2008 US election", 29 November) attacked the plan in California to award presidential electors to America's Electoral College by congressional district, he did not go far enough.

Even if the plan were adopted by all 50 states, the results would be catastrophic. Because very few districts are actually competitive, the election would be contested in even less of the country than it is now. The winner of the national popular vote would also be far more likely to lose the electoral vote that decides the election. Not exactly an improvement.

A few months ago, Democrats in North Carolina nearly passed legislation to accomplish what Republicans in California are w trying. Good-government pundits must take care to expose the problems with this ill-advised modification of state law no matter what party is advancing it, or where.

Ryan O'Donnell

FairVote, Takoma Park, Maryland, USA

National pride in our naughty books

Sir: John Lichfield ("Sex please! (we're French)", 3 December) thinks that the British Library is behind the Bibliotheque nationale de France in making its erotica available. On the contrary, we dismantled the Private Case in the late 1980s and early 1990s to make its contents available through our general catalogue and reading room services.

Your readers will also find some of these items on show in "Seduced: art and sex from antiquity to now" at the Barbican until 27 January. And Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is included in the British Library's present exhibition, "Breaking the Rules". So much for being coy.

Dr Stephen Bury

Head of European & American Collections, British Library, London NW1

Muslims must go back to basics

Sir: Now that Gillian Gibbons is back home from that damaging teddy-bear incident, it is time for British Muslims to honestly debate and dismiss that medieval ideology which had placed her in that pointless predicament.

Most Muslim organisations here called for the release of this innocent teacher, but none publicly disputed the theological roots of such draconian "Islamic" legislation. In fact, groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain endorse the mullahs' punishments for adultery, apostasy, blasphemy, etc, all without sanction in the Holy Qur'an.

Most British Muslims defer to an archaic implementation of a fossilised theology that is not premised on the transcendent text of Islam, but stem from the subservient traditions (hadith) of Muhammad. These innumerable prophetic aphorisms were compiled some 250 years after his death and often blatantly contradict Qur'anic precepts.

When Muslims familiarise themselves with the philosophical foundations of their faith, they will find many of their religious perspectives (be it women's dress, female genital mutilation, jihad, etc) cannot be traced to the immutable liberating word of God, but are based on blind and indiscriminate enforcement of Qur'anic- defying hadith sayings.

Meco campaigns for the full theological self-empowerment of UK Muslims so they can reject extremist Wahhabi-Deobandi dogmas, and champion an Islam rooted in, and relevant to, 21st-century Britain while remaining true to Qur'anic principles and their Muslim identity.

Dr T Hargey

Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford

Sir: I am delighted that Gillian Gibbons has been so generous about the Sudanese. Muslims who called for her flogging and imprisonment should learn from her forgiveness and patience.

I am dismayed at the way some Muslims respond to incidents labelled offensive to Islam. With each incident, every Muslim should ask themselves, "How would the Prophet, peace be upon him, have responded?"

If a child had named a teddy-bear Muhammad in his time, I am sure the Prophet would have been delighted, such was the magnanimity of his character.

Dr Carolyn Edwards

(GP and Muslim), Leeds

Sir: A word of caution to those who castigate the authorities in Sudan over the custodial sentence. It is not long since this country imprisoned a woman for reciting the names of war dead outside Downing Street.

The official charge was holding an unlawful political protest; a more accurate charge would have been causing embarrassment to our Prophet, Tony Bliar.

Martin Sheppard

Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire

Briefly...

Call Kosovo Nato

Sir: In response to Anne Penketh's article on Kosovo's independence (5 December): as Max Weber states, "a state is that human community which (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a certain territory". With Kosovo being protected by 16,000 Nato troops, surely we should be seeing the independent nation state of Nato?

Richard Champney

Newcastle

Kennedy book

Sir: Your article on Senator Edward Kennedy's plan to write an autobiography inaccurately described my 1999 book, Edward M Kennedy: A Biography. While the senator co-operated with me on many subjects, it was not an "authorised" biography. He had no say over what was published.

Adam Clymer

Washington DC

Lunching at the library

Sir: Last Saturday, in my local library, after 20 minutes or so of putting up with the mobile-phone conversation of the person sitting next to me on the computers, I went to the librarian to voice my concern. I was surprised to be told that not only were mobile phones allowed in our libraries, but also that food could now be brought in and was, in fact, on sale. The librarian was uncertain whether cans of lager would be permitted.

Edward Venner

Tunbridge Wells, Kent

A longer stretch

Sir: "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion". The more detention without charge is extended (report, 6 December) the more will be the scope for a leisurely attitude increase among those doing the investigating. With a further 14 days in addition to the existing 28, police may find it possible to maintain previously devised holiday arrangements that could be under pressure from a sudden influx of terrorist suspects.

David Perry

South Cave, East Yorkshire

Oldham's boast

Sir: I don't think anything beats what Oldham has to offer by way of the geographical USP (letter, 5 December). You walk out of the only railway station in the country bearing the name of a contagious disease (Mumps) to be greeted by a viaduct on which appears a declaration that Oldham is the home of the tubular bandage.

Geoff Thomason

Stockport