HAVE YOUR SAY: Global Warming - Real or Bulldust?

Dear Sir,

So, climate change is “bulldust” according to the ‘silent majority of scientists’.

Thanks for relieving of us our fears. We can now go back to the business of our lives, free from thoughts of global warming, rising temperatures, and economic devastation.

I will be sure in future not to pay attention to the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN), the UK government (which commissioned the Stern Review), the Australian Business Roundtable (no government funding there), the CSIRO, Arnie Schwartznegger, and the global leaders who met last week in Washington and agreed on post Kyoto initiatives to reduce emissions.

Loonies the lot, apparently.

It’s true that the media have a lot to answer for when they whip up frenzied doomsday stories from a shred of truth. But never is it more than dangerous than when it attempts to lure us into complacency and detract us from the changes we need to make to preserve the economic and environmental future of our children.

There is real, solid and widely acknowledged evidence that climate change is real and it threatens the future of many. If there is a ‘silent majority’ of scientists saying differently, they are apparently invisible, too.

Because as far as I can see, no such group exists.

SUSAN CLARK
North Ryde

Dear Sir,

Totally agree with your sentiments on the lies and propaganda of so called man-made global warming.

I find it astounding the total lack of debate on this non-issue. They all say it is fact.

I agree we are polluting the earth and should be more careful, but we are not causing climate changes with CO 2 emissions.

I am not a “climate sceptic” at all, I know my facts make more sense.

If you know you are right how can you be called a sceptic?

Surely the other side is simply wrong.

DAVID POLLARD
Ryde

Dear Sir,

I would like to comment on Mr Booth’s obscenities regarding climate change.

It is not “Bulldust” or any other type of bull to agree that the earth’s atmosphere is warming up.

It is the only rational response to the evidence we see around us in Australia and around the world. Ask banana growers in North Queensland or New Orleans residents what they think.

The reasons you’re not hearing from scientists who disagree with global warming is there aren’t any.

I would argue that the only reason Mr Booth feels so strongly about this issue is the same reason why the Prime Minister’s and the Liberal member’s ads are placed so prominently next to the editorial.

Mr Booth, and indeed this newspaper, are paid voices of, not just the Liberal Party, but the extreme right of the Liberal Party.

BEN FOX
Macquarie Park

Dear Sir,

Only the wilfully ignorant deny that human activity is changing the climate.

To think that we can burn millions of tonnes of carbon and pump it into the atmosphere for 150 years and that there will be no effect on the delicate balance of the ecosystem is ludicrous.

However, there is a solution. Solar power, in the form of solar thermal, is viable now, has been proven to work for over 20 years, and is cost competitive with coal and much cheaper than nuclear. No waste, free fuel, and it is available for the next 5,000 million years.

Solar thermal consists of using mirrors to concentrate the suns rays to heat a working fluid which then drives conventional steam turbines. Hot fluid can be stored to provide energy through the night. A system occupying 50 square kilometres in outback NSW could provide all the energy we need to the eastern capitals via a network of High Voltage Direct Current lines that lose only 3 per cent per 1,000 km.

This is proven low-tech technology that is available now at a $50 barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) cost. With economies of scale this can be brought down to less than $30 BOE. No need for nuclear and we could turn off all the coal plants within 15 years.

If we get in early and develop this technology we will have an export industry into the future. Miss it and our kids will be saying “Why didn’t we ...”.

Finally, if you don’t have an environment, you won’t have an economy.

PETER SOBEY
Denistone

Dear Sir,

At the risk of using a well-worn cliché, you are another person inflicted with a bad case of the ostrich syndrome when it comes to the issue of climate change.

If there is a “silent majority” of scientists that refute the so called “doomsayers” I am more than willing for you, sir, to have them put their argument forward in this journal the TWT, or anywhere else for that matter.

How can anyone with one iota of common sense see that we cannot keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere without it having some effect on the planet’s climate?

Of course, this says nothing of all the other toxic chemicals that have been fouling the planetary biosphere since the industrial revolution.

The science is valid but one has to dig deep to get the real truth as the vested interests of big business and world politics have every intention of keeping the real truth from us, and will do so until it is too late.

The environment certainly does not need us, but we desperately need the environment and a quantum change of consciousness if we are to survive.

Everyone is so enamoured by our much vaunted economy and the need for exponential growth. But it will mean diddly-squat if there is no environment to support it.

The time for action is now, the days of sticking our heads in the sand are well and truly gone.

MARC CONYARD
Denistone East

Dear Sir,

I was somewhat surprised to read that global warming and climate change are bulldust (TWT 14/2).

Especially so given that pretty much the entire scientific community have agreed that it is upon us, not to mention the weather changes that are already occurring.

As far as I’m concerned the sooner people start doing something serious about this the better, and continuing denial is simply making the problem much worse for our children and grandchildren.

I guess JB was right eventually about Balmain’s premiership chances, but perhaps that kind of one-eyed approach is better saved for the sporting field.

KYLIE GOODWIN
Epping

Dear Sir,

Mr Booth in his influential editorial role of the TWT, would suggest to his readers that global warming is not occurring (TWT 14/2).

That’s even though every bit of scientific evidence - physical evidence - would indicate the contrary.

Perhaps Mr Booth would like to inform his readers what his credentials are in determining that global warming is, in his words, “bulldust”. The fact is that in the making of an Inconvenient Truth 1,000 of the world’s leading scientist’s papers were assessed - 100 per cent determined that global warming was occurring.

Just looking within our own borders we can see the level of environmental destruction that has been occurring in recent decades.

Seventy-five per cent of Australia’s rainforest has been destroyed and 60 per cent of our native animals are either extinct or endangered.

This is the record of the big companies and their tools, the politicians.

The earth exists in a delicate balance, by making changes to the environment we are changing that balance. We change it at our peril, and we must be prepared to accept the consequences.

That consequence at the moment is global warming - tomorrow it will be something else. Unfortunately it will be the youth of tomorrow that will be left to pick up the pieces.

GREGORY ROWELL
North Ryde

Dear Sir,

Are you trying to say global warming is not happening, because if you are then you are the biggest looney out there.

While you might have had a debate about the seriousness of global warming 10 years ago, there is not much left to debate. The world’s leading scientists are in almost unanimous agreement that global warming is real, is happening now and that we should be worried about it.

Not only scientists, but some of the world’s leading economists and their governments are now factoring in global warming into their predictions of how their nation’s economies and the world’s economy will be affected by this phenomenon you refer to as “bulldust”.

The Stern Report undertaken by the British Government, and recently the most comprehensive (UN) report on global warming ever undertaken, both concluded that global warming is happening and it is a hugely serious and potentially costly problem unless we
do something.

While no-one can predict exactly how bad the effects will be on the ecosystems and human-built environments, agricultural systems, etc. there is no doubt that the effect is real.

Yes, global temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting and it’s all happening now. Instead of calling global warming “bulldust”, maybe you just hit on a new name for The Weekly Times which, in future, I’ll be walking straight from the letterbox and into the recycling bin.

JEFF BURGESS
Eastwood

Dear Sir,

I found your comments shocking and despicable.

That you would even attempt to still label climate change an imaginative issue invented by environmentalists and a loud minority of scientists.

How can you be so ignorant as to even attempt such an accusation only two weeks after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, consisting of leading scientists around the world, has attributed at least a 90 per cent chance of human action causing global warming?

I think you will find that you can count on one hand the scientists still refusing to accept climate change exists.

However, you refer to the media chasing ratings by portraying extremist views of the apocalyptic view of climate change. I have been following this issue in the media over the last year, and mainstream media’s portrayal of the issue has been pathetic.

As always, they have missed the point completely. They focus on the potential loss of investors’ beach houses and harbour mansions through rising sea-levels rather than the consequential extinction of 1683 native Australian species directly and indirectly through increased temperatures.

Among other things, devastating bush fires that plague Australia every summer have the potential to worsen, as it did this year, through increasing dryness and drought, not to mention Australia’s Great Barrier Reef dying before our eyes, and a hole in the ozone layer. And yet you still insist we are making this up.

You are obviously an economic rationalist and a stubborn Howard supporter. However, just like Mr Howard, you sound absolutely ridiculous when it comes to your position on climate change.

Since the United Nations making climate change a global political issue, Mr Howard has continued to backtrack and outright lie, insisting he never claimed ‘climate change didn’t exist’ in fear of looking like a fool. Too late, Mr Howard has had 10 years to make Australia the leading innovator of green technology and a potential super power but has refused to acknowledge the climate change issue because it appears too difficult to swallow economically.

And as for climate change being a “scaremonger’s propaganda”, economists and multi-billion dollar industries are guilty of their own scare campaign, with false proclamations of ‘disastrous depression’ if we steer away from coal and embrace environmentally friendly sources of energy production and a healthier way of life.

GREG HANTES
Dundas, NSW.

Dear Sir,

You call for further debate on global warming little realising that the subject has been debated tirelessly since the 1970s.

Ignorant people like you simply haven’t noticed, while politicians have ignored it because they see remedial action as simply beyond them.

Your pathetic little piece contributed nothing to any debate and simply showed you up as the simpleton you undoubtedly are, and more than adequately explains why you have never progressed beyond writing shallow articles for suburban newspapers.

TIM NIGHTINGALE
North Ryde

Putney’s moans going on, and on

Dear Sir,

How much longer do the readers of your paper - spread through so many suburbs as we are - have to put up with the endless complaints from a minority of Putney residents?

Surely it is about time these people accepted that the Ryde Rehabilitation Centre performs an excellent service and that hundreds of people all over the State are forever in its debt.

They also must accept that services for accident victims or people with disabilities need modernising occasionally. The proposed redevelopment of the Rehab site is not huge. (It is a lot smaller, for instance, than the Meadowbank units that Ryde Council has happily presided over.)

I notice Mr Clapham of CAPO is claiming 5,000 people went to his rally, allegedly from 50 organisations. What a pity for him the TV coverage on the night agreed on less than 1,000.

DAN BRAKE
Meadowbank

High rise plan for Channel 7

It’s been quiet around the Channel 7 development and the community was never informed about the real impact. Why?

The reality is too horrific to contemplate - that’s what I found when I investigated the visual impact myself.

Six and seven storey buildings will rise well above the majestic gum trees currently crowning the ridge. They will stand out like a sore thumb; seen from far away they smother the current, predominantly single-storey homes in this quiet neighbourhood.

This is what Minister Frank Sartor and his developer cohorts don’t want you to know - especially not before an election.

J. KONRAD
Epping

Watkins avoids the Rehab issue

Dear Sir,

Putney residents have pleaded with Rye MP John Watkins on a number of occasions to intervene over the ridiculous over development of the Royal Rehabilitation Centre site.

Alas their calls have fallen on deaf ears, so it would seem.

Sure the proposed over development has a negative impact on many of Mr Watkins’ constituents as it borders his electorate. So he cannot claim “not in my electorate not my problem”.

However, Mr. Watkins (who is also the Deputy Premier) continues to avoid the issue. We shouldn’t be surprised because history indicates that when Mr. Watkins is really needed to stand up for his constituents he runs for cover; you could say he is a political coward.

Just ask your local club, they will recall his failure to stand up to then treasurer Michael Egan over the tax on clubs. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Mr Watkins won’t stand up to Frank Sorter over the over development of the Rehab site.

MARK McRAE
Ryde

Need pedestrian style overpass

Dear Sir,

I strongly support Jessica Kleinberg’s view in To The Point (TWT 14/2) in regard to the inadequate pedestrian/ bike access to Gladesville Bridge from the Tarban Creek area.

As a long-time resident of this area, with a view from my kitchen of the “inadequate RTA endorsed route” I have watched on numerous occasions pedestrians and bikers come half-way down this route, stop, look up, look around, go back, return to the same point and cautiously continue blindly in the hope that somehow they will end up on the Gladesville Bridge footpath. For the uninitiated, the only indication that they will reach their destination is a small sign under Gladesville Bridge which is not visible unless you are standing next to it.

There are no signs at the end of Tarban Creek to indicate how to get onto Gladesville Bridge as a pedestrian; there are no signs of encouragement halfway along this path to tell you that you are going in the right direction even though it doesn’t look like it and if you do venture on, the footpath comes to an end and you either have to bike along Huntleys Point Road on a blind curve or venture along the uneven grass/dirt to reach the access stairs, which are just past the overgrown shrubbery hiding the one and only sign.

It is no wonder that the “goat track” to which Jessica Kleinberg refers must have been born years ago out of frustration.

The “RTA endorsed route” is a steep downhill footpath which until recently came to an abrupt end as it joined Huntleys Point Road.

Some time last year Hunters Hill Council put a typical footpath ramp-end on the end of this path and a matching one directly across the other side of the road.

What use was this? It forces you to cross over the road away from the tunnel/stair access to the Gladesville Bridge footpath. They didn’t put in the return ramp access to get you back to the stairs.

What is really needed is a direct pedestrian overpass style of access. There is room for it at the end of Huntleys Point Road. Certainly in the interim, adequate signage and a footpath that actually connects to the bridge would more than help.

CLAIRE STACK
Huntleys Point

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