The Government's response to climate change is indeed misguided, but not for the reasons given by Keith Orchison(''Rudd, Wong should trade in wasteful carbon vehicle'', March 18, p19).
Orchison follows a path well-trodden by carbon industry lobbyists, spectacularly successful during the Howard years.
In this month's Quarterly Essay, whistleblower Guy Pearse explains their campaign.
Their strategy is to prevent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; if that fails, to delay action; and, if delay fails, to shift the burden of emissions cuts elsewhere.
They cast doubt on the science; spread the furphy that emissions- intensive industries are central to our economy; and make cutting Australian emissions conditional on the activities of other countries.
Susceptible to such influences, the Rudd Government dissembles.
While glossing over flaws in its emissions trading scheme, it tries to reassure us that responsible action is being taken.
Meanwhile, in the real world, signs of climate change are occurring much sooner than expected, and scientists revise downwards their estimates of the levels of atmospheric CO2 that it would be dangerous to exceed.
Most Australians recognise that change is long overdue. We can use energy more wisely, and we are truly the lucky country in plentiful sources of solar, wind and geothermal power.
While Europe considers importing solar energy from the Sahara, we have it on our doorstep.
To reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change, we must cooperate internationally.
But we should start at home.
This means taking actions that we are sure will be effective in reducing Australia's net emissions, rapidly and completely.
David Teather, Reid
Owen Pascoe (''Minds frozen solid as the world warms'', March 17, p13) quotes me as telling the Copenhagen climate change conference that the ''most plausible'' scenario was for a sea-level rise of 1m to 2m by 2100.
This quote is incorrect. The upper end of projected sea-level rise by 2100 is uncertain because of inadequately understood ice-sheet processes.
While there are reputable scientific papers arguing that a sea-level rise of as much as 2m by 2100 might be possible, these authors do not argue this is the ''most plausible'' scenario.
In Copenhagen I presented the most recent observations on sea-level rise.
These indicate that since 1990 sea level is continuing to rise at a rate more than 50 per cent faster than the average during the 20th century and near the upper limit of the IPCC projections (after including an allowance for the poorly understood response of the ice sheets).
If sea level continues to track this upper end of the projections, then by 2100 sea level would rise by the order of 0.8m.
Of course, sea level could diverge above or below this value depending particularly on the response of the ice sheets to increasing atmospheric and oceanic temperatures.
Increased melting of non-polar glaciers and the expansion of the ocean as it warms were the major contributors to sea-level rise from 1950 to the present and will continue to contribute to it during the 21st century.
Ongoing observations of the oceans and the ice sheets are critically important as an early warning system for society, and increased understanding of the ice sheets is needed to improve projections for 2100 and the decades beyond.
In Copenhagen I also made it clear that, without significant, urgent and sustained mitigation, greenhouse gas concentrations could cross a threshold during the 21st century, committing the world to a sea-level rise of metres beyond 2100.
John Church, CSIRO
Bosses fail? Bonus!
Great rewards are given to those who succeed, but even greater to those who fail.
This has been common practice in big business for a long time; but the rewards are not for everyone in the company only for those at the top.
How to stop it?
The current wisdom is that shareholders should be given greater control.
This will rarely make a difference.
The reason is that the voting power in most public companies is controlled by people who themselves benefit from the present rip-off-enabling practices.
They would not want to impose proper limits, for it would be to their own disadvantage to set such precedents.
They would certainly not want to impose limits on a company in which they control the shareholder vote if, as often happens, they are friends of its directors or managers who, in turn, might be in a position to return the favour.
The businessmen and politicians who now, all of a sudden, advocate reform simply by means of greater shareholder control can hardly be unaware of this.
Their sincerity is open to doubt.
Thomas Mautner, Griffith
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