Helen Lawrence’s letter to the editor “Need to address climate emergency” (Bendigo Advertiser, September 18) is high on rhetoric but short on fact.
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It is riven with climate alarmism, relying on dodgy climate modelling, not proven science, to scare state and federal governments into destroying our economy through the abolition of low-cost, reliable electricity in favour of massive taxpayer-funded subsidies ($3.6 billion this year in Australia) which prop up otherwise unviable, expensive and unreliable renewable energy.
In fact, the electricity sector contributes only 36 percent of our CO2 emissions.
So, in order to cut our CO2 emissions we would need to go back to the Stone Age by stopping all industry, transport, agriculture, etc.
Even if we turned the clock back to pre-Australian settlement, and assuming we didn’t eat any animal products, we would only reduce the world’s CO2 emissions by 1.2 percent, Australia’s current contribution.
Climate change has existed since the earth began. It will continue changing until it is no more.
Climate has never been, and cannot be, static. We have experienced far hotter and far colder (Little Ice Age) periods in time.
Think of the medieval warming period when crops were grown in Greenland. What has not been established is the proof that man’s burning of fossil fuels leads to an increase in the global temperature.
Expanding cities full of concrete and bitumen create a heat-island effect and will naturally increase the temperatures recorded.
In fact, if you look back through millennia of climate data, increases in the world’s CO2 have followed global warming by hundreds of years, not vice versa.
This dismantles the cause-and-effect argument that increases in CO2 lead to higher temperatures.
Chris McCormack, Labour DLP candidate for Northern Victoria
READ MORE: Need to address climate change emergency
Will things change?
The ongoing saga over the fate of women in the Federal Liberal party does little in regard to their right to be there.
But then again, where were these strong women when Gillard was being "hung, drawn and quartered" by one in particular, who is now sitting on the back bench.
Another, has also been strangely quiet, when usually her voice would blow the door off a safe.
Now we are going to kick back in 2020 with NO energy policy, just because it suits this government not to recognize any other form of energy.
One example being a windfarm on the coast of Tassie, that is so powerful, it would blow the door off your car if you parked the wrong way.
Nobody is suggesting that this or others in isolation is the total solution, but Australia has an abundance of renewable options to draw upon, which are being mostly ignored, because it is not this governments idea.
Some of the non decisions being made at the moment, make Basil Fawlty look like an economic genius.
It is the role of any government to explore all options available, not just the ones their powerful donors prefer.
It’s like all aboard the one way express service to dysfunction junction.
But will things change? I doubt it.
Ken Price, Eaglehawk
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