Climate hypocrisy getting annoying

Your article “As US and China squabble, Australia hauls in riches” (10/9) makes me wonder whether people, including some near and dear to me, have lost their reason. They seek to boycott and unload shares in coal companies, which generate some $12 billion in tax revenues, while running their lights and computers on power generated mostly by coal. (The “woke” person running BHP seems to hate his own products.)

They throng climate change protest rallies to show they care, potentially delaying or preventing others from getting to work or hospital. They reject nuclear power, the cleanest efficient energy source on earth, and like the idea of electric cars — yet would presumably never use one to travel, say, from Sydney to Dubbo, because recharging could triple or quadruple the trip time. They believe Australia — which has neglible emissions on a global scale — should “de-carbonise” its economy, yet never demonstrate to this end outside Indian or Chinese embassies. They agree mining is “bad”, but use the products of mining in everything they do. They’re concerned about emissions from air travel, yet fly regularly.

Point this out and a typical response is furious, often hysterical, rebuttal. Family and friends, a suggestion: less virtuous grandstanding and hypocrisy and more honesty might be the right springboard for making the world a better place.

Bruce Heilbuth, Turramurra, NSW

Australians worried about climate change can relax. The secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation has recently rebuked climate alarmists, saying that change is “not going to end the world” and that the media in his country (Finland) were “creating additional anxiety”. He added alarmists selectively pick out facts from UNIPCC reports to suit their narratives in a way that “resembles religious extremism”.

This fact picking further exaggerates existing exaggerations — UNIPCC models almost all overestimate temperature increases; recent Cato Institute analysis of 108 models found 105 predicted higher surface temperatures for 1998-2014 than actually occurred. The climate crisis is in the climate models, not the real world. So stop worrying.

Doug Hurst, Chapman, ACT

The media will no doubt give mass coverage to the climate change protests by school children next week, but will reporters ask these protesters the serious questions? Such as do they know what percentage of our electricity comes from coal and gas? And are they prepared to make any personal sacrifices to help tackle climate change? Will they refuse to be chauffeured to school each day? Will they refuse to go on holidays that involve car or air travel? Or schoolies week?

The children and their placards will make good visual news footage, but serious analysis of their demands will be sadly missing.

Ray Warren, Mandurah, WA

Floating slowly

I rarely disagree with Judith Sloan, but I must correct one aspect of her article “Time to get the budget in surplus and pay off debt” (10/9), deriving from her reading of Paul Tilley’s recent book Changing Fortunes: A History of the Australian Treasury.

I wonder whether, in saying, “The dollar was floated ... without the blessing of Treasury”, Sloan has fully read Tilley’s coverage of that event. In the book he writes: “While Stone, as Secretary to the Treasury, was opposed to the decision that was taken on 9 December, he has since argued that this did not mean Treasury opposed floating the exchange rate in principle. Rather, it was about sequencing and timing. It is this claim I will seek to assess.” And his conclusion? “I think, however, that the evidence supports Stone’s claim that his position was changing from around October 1983, and from that point on he did support moving to a deregulated exchange rate, albeit more slowly.”

John Stone, Lane Cove, NSW