The Government says its cap-and-trade emissions scheme is the primary means of meeting its carbon emissions goal. It says it will set its cap at 5 to 25per cent below emission levels in 2000. It will do this by regulation in 2010. Once set, the cap will remain for five years.
The cap is the crucial element which will reveal whether the scheme will have a significant impact or is merely an ineffectual concept.
The Government is demanding that Parliament approve its scheme next week, which means parliamentarians would be forced to vote in ignorance of the crucial element which should guide their deliberations. This is an abuse of the parliamentary process, for which there is no excuse: the scheme is not scheduled to start until 2011.
Bob Turner, Curtin
Weather divining
I read with interest the article ''ANU rainfall atlas projects future'' (August5, p4), which said an atlas of world rainfall predicted less rain in western and southern Australia, presumably over the next 100 years.
Anyone interested in climate change should consult the excellent book by Dr Garth W. Paltridge, The Climate Caper (Connor Court Publishing, 2009).
Before his retirement, Paltridge was chief research scientist with the CSIRO's atmospheric research division.
He also directed the Institute for Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, and was the chief executive of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre, studying the role of that continent and the Southern Ocean in climate change. Paltridge's book comments on the climate models on which the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relies, saying that the panel's simulations of the broad distribution of present-day temperature are only so-so.
And, as might be expected, the panel's simulations of the broad distribution of other parameters such as rainfall can only be described as terrible.
Of present rainfall in Australia, he says climate models' simulations of average Australian rainfall ranged from less than 200mm a year to greater than 1000mm a year.
The actual measured value is about 450mm per year.
If the models do so poorly at predicting present rainfall, how can we have any faith in their predictions 100 years into the future? Of the various forecasts of late 21st century rainfall, more than half predict an increase over Australia, and fewer than half predict a decrease.
The average is for an increase of about 8mm a year.
It seems likely that far-future regional rainfall may well be inherently unpredictable.
Dr John Penhallurick, Fraser
My right to die
I write in support of Bryan Furnass (Letters, August 3) and ask how often readers have heard the plaintive wish ''I want to die'' from some elderly, sick relative or friend?
Who are we to deny them this right?
Why shouldn't people be allowed to sign an agreement, such as an organ donation commitment, which says that, in the event that they become incapable of sustaining an acceptable intelligent, physical life for themselves. they be provided with a mercy-killing tablet?
I accept that there are religious and social attitudes which prevent a general acceptance of this wish to ''take a pill''.
However, I believe I have the human right to demand that I should be allowed while still of sound mind not only to choose to will my body's organs to another life, but also to choose to will my soul to death, thus relieving the burden on my relatives, friends, carers and myself for perpetuating a tired burned-out existence which asks simply for a dignified exit.
Greg Cornwell, Yarralumla
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