Senator Steve Fielding has returned from a visit to the United States and it seems he has been persuaded that the rising atmospheric CO2 level is not influencing global warming.
If he is wrong and we act on his assumption, we are destroying the future for our children and grandchildren. If he is correct and we act on his assumption, we can happily continue handing prime agricultural land over to coal mining, continue polluting the environment, destroying biodiversity, driving vulnerable species to extinction and destroying our forests with impunity. All in the name of economic growth.
I prefer to accept the opinion of the vast majority of climate scientists, so I will take steps to further reduce my carbon footprint and to lobby our local politicians, calling for them to make sure there is action on carbon reduction at a local, national and international level whenever there is an opportunity. The risks are too high and the time too short to waste it on more specious arguments.
Jo Lewis, Akolele, NSW
Flawed forecast
Congratulations to Senator Fielding on his fact-finding trip to the US regarding climate change.
Senator Fielding is right to want to get to the bottom of the science. I'm glad he did, because I read with interest that a submission by the Department of Agriculture to a House of Representatives inquiry into long-term weather forecasting admitted that the present report ''was less than useful'' to farmers. The report said the high cost of (inaccurate) computing modelling did not offer a good return on investment.
Well, there you go.
The CSIRO and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are using computers to tell us what all that ''naughty'' carbon is going to do to the climate in 20 to 100 years time.
Yet these whizz-bang computers can't even get the weather right one year in advance. So why are we pinning all our hopes on such a flawed system to tell us what climate change is going to happen in the future?
You would be a fool to restructure the economy based on such imperfection.
Alas, that's exactly what the Rudd Government proposes to do with its emissions trading scheme, or ''carbon pollution'' (oxymoron) reduction scheme. What a joke. I would laugh long and loud if it wasn't so serious!
Alan Barron, Grovedale, Victoria Time to change
There is something surreal about all the discussion as to whether a deal can be reached in Copenhagan on climate change at the end of the year.
Even the most optimistic forecasts for agreement on a treaty are hopelessly out of sync with the science.
Given the vast amount of evidence to the contrary, only the most misguided optimist can really believe that we will cap emissions at 450 parts per million and therefore avoid more than two degrees of warming.
In fact, there is a growing school of thought which believes that 350ppm is a more realistic safe upper limit, but the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere already stands at 384ppm.
It is clear we cannot continue to devote all our efforts solely to preventing climate change, we must increasingly ask how we can adapt.
This is not to say we should stop trying to take collective action, but we also put in place measures to deal with the changing environment.
More effort must be put into halting biodiversity loss, restoring eco systems and protecting water supplies.
The bank bailouts proved that governments can develop multi-billion dollar rescue packages at the drop of a hat, but it seems increasingly likely that this generation of leaders will be remembered as the ones who saved the banks and let the planet die.
Simon Leeds, Nicholls
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