It’s common sense to make use of the sun’s energy

Bjorn Lomborg again makes a sensible case on how to deal with climate change.

Bjorn Lomborg presents an intelligent review of the climate change debate (“Wasteful focus on climate change draws precious resources best used elsewhere”, 8/12).

Whether you believe there is a relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and temperatures, or you don’t, it makes common sense to make better use of the sun’s energy. It does not make sense to use electricity to generate hot water when the sun’s energy is readily available.

Widespread use of solar hot water heaters would significantly reduce the load on the grid, and being independent of the grid, are not part of renewable energy with all the problems that creates. The performance of solar panels deteriorates quickly and within 10 years they are ready to be scrapped. Solar hot water heaters have lives of 40 years or more.

We should focus on more effective and economical ways of using natural energy rather than squandering billions subsidising renewables

R. Watson, Sunnybank Hills, Qld

Is it too much to expect those denying the substance of Bjorn Lomborg’s article to offer a reasoned rebuttal and even less to expect any feelings of regret at the missed opportunity by our universities in opposing his appointment to their midst?

Their indoctrination into the climate change cult has gone on for a long time and their return to reason will cost them, and the rest of us, lots of money and pain.

Gordon Thurlow, Launceston, Tas

Bjorn Lomborg seems to have established himself as humanity’s moral pathfinder. But he declined to mention over-population of the planet, the article on India (“Why India stinks, and what’s to be done”, 7/12) being relevant to that trend.

All of the problems facing humanity and planet Earth can only be exacerbated by our population doubling every 50 years or so. Does Lomborg have any position on that lapse in our basic morality?

Peter Bishop, Wurtulla, Qld

To help the coming generation of readers understand priorities, a few sessions at the nearest planetarium should be mandatory for all educational curriculums to provide a sense of perspective. Lesson number one is that the sun, the moon and cosmic events control the climate. It is a pretentious lie that taxing a trace gas in the atmosphere can regulate temperatures on this planet.

The talkfest in Poland attended by 30,000 junketeers huddling together in plastic marquees heated with banks of diesel generators evokes a redefinition of gross ignorance. That the UN has lionised as a role model and flown in a 15-year-old ill-educated schoolgirl who wants to ration air travel is surely child exploitation

John McRobert, Indooroopilly, Qld

If our government really believes that cutting coal-fired emissions into the atmosphere is a vital planet aving objective, why do we continue to export coal in such vast quantities?

We deny coal to ourselves, yet sell it to the rest of the world in record quantities. It doesn’t make any sense. The same coal produces the same CO2 emissions, no matter where in the world it is used.

Australia’s coal exports reached a record 372 million tonnes worth $56.5 billion in 2017, 35 per cent more than 2016, with China alone buying over a billion tonnes. They are not buying it to sniff the stuff. It’s like a farmer selling all his food produce while his family starves. Either stop exporting coal or use it at home.

Andrew L. Urban, Seaforth, NSW

Thanks for the two-page spread in The Weekend Australian with articles by Graham Lloyd, Chris Kenny and Bjorn Lomborg outlining the futility of our climate and energy policies. It is clear these policies will cost a fortune and make no difference to the climate. This poses the question of why we persist when the big emitters, China and India, are demanding the right to increase emissions.

The answer goes deeper than politics and economics — the Chinese, Indians and other coal users simply do not believe the climate change theology. They concentrate instead on real problems such as pollution, cheap power, food production and urban congestion.

Only those of us in the developed world can afford to pander to the warm inner glows that come from saving a world that does not need saving and solving problems our coal burning friends would love to have.

Doug Hurst, Chapman, ACT