GREAT WORK, GRETA
How can one small, young girl, Greta Thunberg, tower over the world leaders? These are the people who direct our paths for the next decades and yet at the COP26 they spoke loudly but did little and they need to be called out for that as they were by Greta.
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There is no reason why the message from one individual cannot be the right message, and it seems her message is the right one.
We all need to work to improve the environment before we get a once in a century event every week. as seems to be happening with the fires and floods that are happening in some many places.
Maybe it's time for the world's leaders to listen to even one young voice as they are the ones that are going to be living in the world that these leaders leave us long after they are gone. Keep up the good work, Greta.
Regards, Dennis Fitzgerald.
COALITION AND CLIMATE
At any stage of technological development, owners and providers of existing technologies have a financial interest in maintaining dominance of that technology, and greater financial resources to protect them than developers and proponents of alternative technologies - regardless of the technology's potential superiority.
The more fundamental or pervasive that technology, as in the case with fossil fuels as a source of energy, the greater the potential and incentive to resist change.
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Simply understanding this reality should make politicians and policy advisers wary of the special pleading, blandishments, and donations of incumbent technology owners. And to make them especially careful to critically examine arguments purporting to support the case for protecting existing technologies at the expense of emerging alternatives.
However, the interests of politicians are very different from those of the public. Their dominant interest is in gaining and retaining political power, and in differentiating themselves from opposing parties.
The Coalition's fundamental failing regarding climate change has been allowing themselves to be persuaded by arguments convenient to their interests.
John Rolls, Vale Park.
CRITICISM HARD TO COP
SOMETIMES it is hard to listen to the ravings of Labor's Penny Wong.
Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison was openly called a liar by the worldwide media pertaining to the scrapping of the $90 million French submarine contract in preference to a better deal involving the United States and the UK.
That is a deal that will not only benefit the safety of surrounding countries, but also The French.
Why shouldn't Scott Morison release text messages after being called a liar that proved to be to the contrary?
It is hypocritical to stand there looking so injured hard done by when on the world stage, several years ago, the French continued to test nuclear bombs despite condemnation and the requests to stop from most countries.
And has the French president also forgotten the Australians who forfeited their lives to free France from the Germans?
Sometimes it is frugal to put one's mind into gear of remembrance before opening your mouth.
Peter Doddy, Trevallyn.
SHORT-TERM INTERESTS
JOHN Coulson (The Examiner, November 5) is right to question the modelling on climate change, but not the analysis.
The evidence is overwhelming and underpinned by the same scientific principles that have orchestrated the best responses to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
why in this country it is the conservatives who have overwhelmingly obstructed and rebutted climate change science?
The short-term interests of fossil fuel extraction and winning elections are exactly that: short-term.
If Barnaby Joyce genuinely wanted to see workers on the land and in mining towns compensated for net zero, he would be focusing on the jobs that can best be adapted to climate change.
Tony Newport, Hillwood.
COMPLEX CLIMATE MODELS
I HAVE to agree with John Coulson regarding climate models and the confidence placed in their predictive accuracy.
As it happens I was the first to use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software at AMC some 25 years ago regarding flow around a ship's hull. The software evaluated the Navier Stokes equations which govern fluid momentum.
These equations are also at the core of climate-modelling software, the oceans and atmosphere being fluids.
Climate models are far, far more complex than those for liquid flow around a solid body. The first models I ran produced results that I knew were greatly exaggerated, that is about 100 per cent higher waves produced.
I soon figured out that I needed more data points, a finer mesh in the lingo and hey presto, results that accorded closely with the data from the actual vessel in operation.
Comparing what I was doing with something as complex as the world's atmosphere and oceans is like comparing times tables with the federal budget calculations.
It is thus tempting to simplify the model, at which point the number-crunching is no longer a true model, rather more a mathematical automaton.
Weather systems are basic climate mechanisms but if they are too small vs mesh size they are not actually modelled.
What could go wrong?
Mike Seward, Port Fairy.
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