QUESTIONING the independence and integrity of government / industry funded scientists is sensible and necessary.

Those who do so are not conspiracy theorists.

Most intelligent people have now relegated this hackneyed and dreary cliché to the dustbin. It only demeans the accuser, Mr Keenan.

In my letter (November 20) I wrote, “We must accept, and I do, that green energy alone may not be enough.”

Was Mr Keenan so obsessed with insulting me that he missed that?

Yes, I questioned the need for multi-billion pound Chinese nuclear reactors that won’t be built in time.

Mr Cameron is entrusting our energy security to a disturbingly unpredictable superpower with appalling human rights records, whose imperial muscle we are only now beginning to see, as they violate maritime law and weaponise their man-made islands in international waters.

Is that really preferable to US imported fracked gas that would meet our energy shortfall and save our small, overcrowded island from the environmental hazards of UK fracking?

Latest developments regarding fracking prove concerns are well founded.

Of course Mr Keenan may again accuse me of ‘conspiracy madness’.

But could he tell readers clearly, if he’s able to given his struggle with good English, how he would feel if this (below) happened to the River Test?

“Canada’s national energy regulator has halted construction on a new TransCanada Corp natural gas pipeline after reviewing evidence that it may have spilled a toxic drilling fluid into a major Western Canadian river.” — Reuters 20/1l/15.

Perhaps Canadian regulators are mad conspiracy theorists too.

Jennifer Godschall Johnson, Balksbury Hill, Upper Clatford.