Australia has always had bushfires, but not nearly as rampant and widespread as the current ones.
Australia has always had bushfires, but not nearly as rampant and widespread as the current ones.
On December 6, David Bennett gave us some maths about Aotearoa/New Zealand's emissions towards global warming, 0.17per cent of the world's total, a tiny amount, considering the rest of the world is therefore contributing 99.83per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG).
As we are fifth on the OECD list of highest-per-capitaemissions, it should be okay for the lowest emitters, say India, currently 2.5 tonnes per person (pp), to up their emissions to ours, currently just under 18tonnes pp? That 2.5tonnes pp is also part of India generating electricity using vast amounts of coal.
Why is it all right for Aotearoa/New Zealand to ride on the backs of the poorest countries of the world so we can have a better lifestyle? So we can have a double garage with two SUVs?
Incidentally, top of the OECD list at 22.2tonnes pp is Australia, currently increasing their GHG emissions courtesy of the vast bushfires currently devastating parts of their East Coast.
And, if David Bennett had read my Conservation Comment (November 25) properly, he would not have ignored the connection between Australia's dismissive attitude to climate change and the unprecedented (the word I used in my Conservation Comment) current bushfires.
Of course Australia has always had bushfires, so has Aotearoa, but so far not nearly as rampant and widespread as the current ones. In fact I remember, as a child in Whangarei, being awestruck at the red sky caused by Australian bushfires even then.
I never wrote that the current bushfires are a direct result of global warming, but all the science says that because of climate change/global warming the incidence, severity and extended season from the usual summer peak will increase. Exactly what is happening.
Saying "so" every time one answers a question is the new Kiwi linguistic clanger. It replaces the cringefests "at the end of the day" and "going forward", which had a life far in excess of their PR creators' expectations.
Saying "so" first, every time a question is answered, makes one sound informed, in charge, on top of the issue. Tailor-made for politicians and corporate climbers.
When the average bloke says it all the time, it just sounds silly.
PETER RUSSELL Whanganui
Climate change
John Milnes, in his Conservation Comment on November 25, starts by saying he makes no apology for banging on about climate change again — and, if he seriously believes in it, neither should he.
However, he should probably apologise for some of the exaggerations that follow.
The connection between the latest bushfires in Australia and their coal exporting industry are a sad joke. Even if accepting that CO2 levels are causing global warming, shutting down the coal industry in Australia would only result in the end users sourcing lower-quality coal from other sources and would have had no noticeable effect on the recent fires.
Technicolour sky in Birkdale, Auckland on November 23. Bushfire smoke, dust and cloud make for picturesque sunsets.
The main causes of the destructiveness of the latest bushfires, I believe, are drought and failure to manage the fuel build-up in the bush areas in the off-season by controlled burn. This was the main conclusion from the inquiry after the massive loss of life in the Victoria bushfires in 2008.
Despite this conclusion, burn-offs have struggled to keep the fuel loadings under control. As to drought, recently, Andrew Pitman, a human-caused global warming advocate speaking at Sydney University, said: "There is no link between climate change and drought in Australia". Rainfall totals over the past 100 years bear this out.
DENNIS NITSCHKE Marton
Editor's note: Andrew Pitman later clarified he meant there was no "direct" link between climate change and drought, but there was a clear indirect link.
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