ONE of the most common excuses for not taking any action on climate change is that its science is still undecided. This is a myth created by climate deniers to justify their opposition to the problem.
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It is 27 years since a group of about 1700 scientists first informed the United Nations that a problem with the world's climate existed.
In 2017 a second follow-up report was sent to the UN by 15,364 scientists from 184 different countries, revealing that the situation with our climate has deteriorated alarmingly since the first report. It reports that the world's average temperature and carbon dioxide emissions are increasing and the rate of increase is getting bigger every year.
This short report is titled World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice, and is available online.
This is not about predictions of what will happen in future, but what has happened in the past and the situation now. It also does not discuss who or what is responsible, and what should be done about it, which is more a political decision than a scientific problem.
Scientists are 100 per cent decided that there is a serious problem with the world climate, which is getting worse at an alarming rate. I challenge any climate denier to provide proof to the contrary.
Kevin Wilkinson, Arakoon
Defies comprehension
I HAVE never understood why anyone, anywhere, takes any notice of anything the United Nations says.
The UN is undeniably the greatest waste of money and resources in the history of mankind. Its own history is a veritable litany of failure. Biafra, Kosovo, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Middle East and so on. If the Yanks didn't get involved then 'it' didn't get done.
The delegates from some 196 countries and their sycophants descend on New York living in five star hotels and making not one jot of difference. They all signed the Kyoto agreement, the Rio agreement, the Paris agreement but there is only five countries who can make a difference to global warming and currently they pay lip service to these agreements and the choreographed words of Scandinavian teenagers.
There is also only 14 countries who can make a difference to conflict resolution and there is no country who can prevent half a billion African children from dying of malnutrition in the next 30 years. We can't feed the billion in Africa now so how on Earth, given the birthing rates, are we going to feed two billion?
Do the maths. I can't understand why people think that if Australia stops exporting thermal coal it will make any difference to global warming. Don't they realise Indonesia, Columbia, South Africa, Mozambique all have as much coal reserves as Oz and the hour we stop exporting, one or all of these countries will pick up the market share.
Australian coal-fired power stations produce less than a quarter of one percent of total world emissions.
The recent report of a massive iceberg breaking away from Antartica raised a storm of protest from Greenies as a sure sign we were going to Hell in a basket. On page 23 of theJuly/Sept 1989 edition of Australian Geographic there is an article about 'B9', a frozen collosus 150 kilometres long, 50km wide and 250m thick, many times the size of the present ice cube, breaking away from the Ross Ice shelf (no relation) and it was quite rightly reported as a normal happening.
Ross Holborow, Smithtown
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