Trevor Scott, Castlemaine
I was glancing through last month’s newspapers and came across Cheryl Antonio’s letter ‘Anomaly Haaa’ (Opinions, March 13). You claim Cheryl, that John Lewis said “multiple periods of very hot weather going back to the 1800’s, are nothing but an anomaly”. You attempt to disprove this and you present us with a lot of statistics from the BOM, but you don’t seem to be able to produce any records before 1968. I think that John was trying to show that overall the weather has been much warmer since 1968. You seem to be trying to discredit the existence of climate change so I feel like I need to step in and set the record straight.
Only 20 years after this, in June 1988, Dr James Hansen, NASA scientist, addressed the US Congress. Firstly he told them that already the excess amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere was contributing to a greenhouse effect, and that there was already evidence that this was adversely affecting our climate.
Secondly, he told the government leaders gathered before him that the observed warming was caused by human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
Thirdly he told them that the greenhouse effect was already increasing the frequency and the severity of extreme weather events such as heat waves and cyclones. This was all backed up by former vice president Al Gore in 2006 when in his scientifically-based film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ he told the world that the Earth is gradually warming and the most effective way to stop this is to stop producing the greenhouse gas, that is, we need a rapid and very extensive reduction in carbon pollution. Storing it in the ground doesn’t work, carbon credits don’t work. The only way to fix this problem is to transition as quickly as possible to renewable sources of energy and leave the remaining fossil fuel in the ground. There is already almost 40 per cent green power in the grid. What we need right now is the political will to get this to 100 per cent by 2050, if not sooner.