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The claim that Greece may receive an unfair exemption to increase lignite use (Report, 3 November, theguardian.com) is not justified – it is based on misinterpretations:

1) Greece is not trying to “revive its lignite-based model”. In fact, retirements of fossil fuel plants in 2014-23 amount to 4,095MW, including 2,671MW of lignite capacity.

Industry has long harvested some of the 700 seaweed species in British waters, but are large-scale algae farms on the horizon?

British seaweeds are among our most underrated resources and hugely important for the ecology of the seas, but they get nothing like the recognition that, say, a wild meadow or ancient woodland gets.

Related: Seaweed biofuels: a green alternative that might just save the planet

Related: Sea spaghetti in the supermarket: the unstoppable rise of seaweed

They may be cheap and expendable, but XBTs provide crucial data about the oceans

Earth is warming due to the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Scientists are working hard to measure how fast the planet is warming, how much warming has occurred over the past few decades, and how this is affecting coastal areas, ecosystems, and fisheries. By understanding these factors, scientists can better project future climate impacts.

A large component of Earth’s warming involves the oceans, which absorb excess heat. The difficulty of gathering measurements in the oceans is that they are vast, deep, and often hard to reach. It’s also costly. Think about it: if you wanted to take the ocean’s temperature, how would you do it?

Obtaining ocean temperature measurements in a sustained manner is critical for assessing global changes and for studying how they may potentially impact climate, weather, and ecosystems. This is truly and international and multi-institutional effort, which for example, together with other types of ocean observations, satellite data and numerical models, has allowed us to estimate the heat transported in the South Atlantic Ocean and helped us to identify and assess connections with global extreme weather events.

XBTs provide a unique tool that allows us to gain insight on how these changes are occurring, which very often provide managers and decision makers with information to evaluate and facilitate mitigation efforts.

The failure to get to grips with our crises, by all mainstream political parties, is likely to lead to a war between the major powers in my lifetime

Wave the magic wand and the problem goes away. Those pesky pollution laws, carbon caps and clean-power plans: swish them away and the golden age of blue-collar employment will return. This is Donald Trump’s promise, in his video message on Monday, in which the US president-elect claimed that unleashing coal and fracking would create “many millions of high-paid jobs”. He will tear down everything to make it come true.

But it won’t come true. Even if we ripped the world to pieces in the search for full employment, leaving no mountain unturned, we would not find it. Instead, we would merely jeopardise the prosperity – and the lives – of people everywhere. However slavishly governments grovel to corporate Luddism, they will not bring the smog economy back.

Related: 'Extraordinarily hot' Arctic temperatures alarm scientists

Even if we ripped the world apart in the search for full employment, leaving no mountain unturned, we wouldn't find it