The proposed arrangement will involve outlandish retaining walls, which will blind prospects to and from key sites in the precinct.

The reports in the NCA Works Approval application papers for this work, acknowledge the important heritage values of the existing "cloverleaf" road arrangements etc, but invoke a formative 1950's layout in a sort of defence of removing them.

That ignores the later introduction of Parkes Way, a critical east-west traffic element in the evolution of the city (difficult to imagine in Griffin's time), of which the City Hill cloverleafs are natural and essential components. The parkway and the cloverleafs enhance the vital open space character of the Central National Area, and coexist superbly.

That arrangement must not be destroyed, and certainly not to facilitate (highly intrusive) property development - the obvious underlying raison d'être for the outlandish subject road re-arrangements etc, together with the associated proposed tram line route (London Circuit - Commonwealth Avenue).

If light rail stage 2 is to proceed, then it clearly must not travel via Commonwealth Avenue.

I cannot let another day go by and not write about the disaster facing us in Canberra with the proposed second stage of the light rail to Woden still going ahead, when it has been shown to be uneconomic, outdated and as far as trip time goes, longer than is currently the case.

Apart from the horrors that await us trying to drive through the city when the city interchange is levelled, what chaos will there be for everyday traffic trying to manoeuvre around the construction?

Is this just a case of the Barr government not wanting to lose face? It is still not too late to go for the electric trackless buses as proposed by many alternatives but is this government too stubborn to change?

It's high time our government paid more attention to people like South Coast bushfire survivor Jan Harris, who describes Australia's 2050 emissions target as 'an absolute slap in the face' ('Climate warriors count their wins,' November 7).

Harris is part of a group called Bushfire Survivors For Climate Action, which has recently taken legal action on the issue of climate change. This year's IPPC report states that we need to take strong and decisive action to phase out fossil fuels in the next decade, if we are to keep global warming below dangerous levels. Yet our federal government continues to spend billions of taxpayers' dollars to subsidise the coal and gas industries. Is it any wonder that climate litigation is becoming more commonplace?

Alan May (Letters. November 9), trots out the old, familiar but specious "argument" that the Earth has experienced temperature fluctuations over its long history, so why all the fuss about trying to correct the current one?

The answer is easily seen. Does Mr May seriously believe that hordes of scientists around the globe, working on this matter for decades, haven't thought of that? Does he have some special knowledge or insight that science at large does not?

Climate science is not simple. However, here's one simple point. Historical temperature changes occurred in rough cycles on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years.

Mr May ignores what has long been seen as very different this time - the extraordinary rate of change of global temperature. Global temperature has risen sharply since the industrial revolution - a mere couple of hundred years or so. Long strongly suspected (scientists do not leap to premature judgment) of being caused by human activity, this has now been accepted as proven.

Humans must act to correct the situation. Fast. We've wasted precious time and are already witnessing the effects. The globe faces an existential threat. COVID-19 and recent climate-related disasters will look like picnics by comparison.

Answers are out there

In response to Alan May's request for information about temperatures in the interglacial periods (Letters, November 9), it appears the answer is anything up to 6 degrees higher than today at the poles, 4 degrees in alpine areas such as in Switzerland and 2 degrees elsewhere. As scientists say, however, climate change is more than temperature.

A 2019 article in The Conversation by Fiona Hibbert et al based on their paper in Nature Communications says sea levels were 10 metres higher in the last interglacial period (125,000 to 118,000 years ago) when temperatures were about one degree warmer than today. It came first from melting Antarctic ice and later from Greenland ice. We are currently seeing record ice loss from both.

The ice age that will follow today's interglacial period has been pushed back, possibly by tens of thousands of years, thanks to human-induced warming. While the Earth is still at the mercy of precession, obliquity and eccentricity, the biggest influencer of climate at the moment is the emission of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and other human activities.

The Interesting article on 'Climate change poses health risks ' (Canberra Times, 8 November) didn't really say much on the specific health risks of climate change. Now we can envisage what many of these are - bushfires and smoke, extreme storms, etc. But what gets little mention in the media or recognition from some of the climate dinosaurs in the Morrison government is the wet bulb temperature.

This is a combined measure of heat and humidity. Humans and other animals keep their bodies cool by sweating. At a wet bulb temperature of 30C it becomes harder for us to cool our bodies and as the wet bulb temperature goes up we will not survive. High wet bulb temperatures are already showing up in a number of parts of the world and unless we keep global temperature rise to the preferred Paris goal of 1.5 degrees, humanity is in big trouble.

Better facilities needed

I find it disingenuous that a Sydney person lectures Canberra about infection management. We may not have had to endure a lockdown had Sydney taken prompt action to control the Delta COVID-19 outbreak. However, I do agree it is time for the gallery to offer cloaking facilities, for those visitors who do not have a car to store things in.

Minister Morton's "outrageous slur" rejection of Labor's claim that the public service leadership had been politicised (8 November CT) is indeed an outrageous slur on the intelligence of anyone with any knowledge of the workings of the APS since 1996 and John Howards "night of the long knives" when he sacked some six departmental heads after promising "no slash and burn ... on the basis of ideology".

Every LNP government since Howard's has ensured that only its friends are put in places adjacent to it and a large share of policy work has been contracted out. The ensuing lack of well-researched non-political advice is witnessed in the fiasco surrounding our current relationships with China and France and the US. The ideology in LNP decisions is highlighted by Tony Abbott's sacking of Martin Parkinson because he had been secretary of the climate change department.

Another outrageous slur Mr Morton is that on the taxpayer and the APS by your government when it is realised that it costs two-and-a-half times as much to employ an outside source as it does a permanent public servant and the difference in cost might build a new hospital or (heaven forbid) a quarantine centre annually. Now, in the very next edition of The Canberra Times, you tell us that voter identification is necessary. Given the fact that there have been no convictions for voter fraud in the past are you not casting an outrageous slur on the APS in the form of the ATO and the AFP that they are not doing their jobs?

Last week as Elizabeth Lee set out for COP26 to advocate for climate action her opponents Andrew Barr and Shane Rattenbury attacked her because others in her party aren't doing enough to get to zero carbon (November 3, p2). These two should address their own zero credibility problem first. They have committed to zero conveyance duty by 2031-32. On that path, this year to achieve revenue neutrality they should be aiming to collect just $167 million but have budgeted for over $350 million.

By one measure they are 10 years into tax reform but more than 11 years behind schedule. At the current rate of progress Barr and Rattenbury are running neck-and-neck with Morrison to reach their respective zero targets by 2050.

In the interest of transparency the National party should change its name to the National Mining Party.

Just back in town and read the ACT government wants to spend tens of millions on raising London Circuit, then reading the ACT has nearly 30,000 people near the poverty line and that we have the highest hospital waiting time in the country. Have I missed something?

Ian Jannaway's suggestion (Letters, November 9) raises with me how does "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees" sit with the Black Lives Matter "taking the knee"?

The Coalition government's recently announced embrace of electronic vehicle charging infrastructure recalls their cavalier dismissal of Labor's 2019 policies to promote EVs. The "end of the weekend," Morrison warned.

Hypocrisy or myopia: choose one.

I'm confused. Are these extra EV chargers going to ruin our weekend?

I wonder if Scott Morrison not divulging the modelling for his government's net zero target ("No date for climate modelling", p1, November 11) may be likened unto a magician not divulging how his/her magic trick works.

Now that little Cleo has been found I'm wondering if the nation could turn its attention towards finding Albo. Not sure if a reward is warranted for the missing Opposition Leader but I suppose we could pass the hat around.

French referee gives Aussie a yellow card, probably costing the Wallabies the game. Is there no end to the French vindictiveness just because we cancelled a $90 billion contract?

Years ago the electors declared the Democratic Labor Party irrelevant. Isn't it time we did the same with the National party?

I think it unfair to accuse the Prime Minister of yet another a U-turn, this time on electric vehicles. Surely he is merely keeping to character and spinning around and around.

The easiest way around these voter ID laws proposed by Minister Morton (CT, November 9) is to just tell the polling booth worker you've donated $1 million to a cabinet minister's blind trust.

Then you won't have to reveal your identity at all.