Shipping industry should stay on zero-carbon course

LAST week a press release popped up with an eye-catching headline. It said: "Research shows human interference in major weather system is central to current climate issues, not carbon emissions."

Given that - at least following Joe Biden's inauguration as US president on Wednesday - the whole world is attempting to move as quickly as possible to a zero carbon future, that is an interesting statement.

Apparently an Edinburgh-based researcher, Conor McMenemie, has unearthed a relationship between human efforts to control the annual River Nile flood in Egypt, to levels of rainfall further downwind.