Phillip Scoles, Castlemaine
When we talk about ‘believers’ and ‘non believers’, what are we really talking about – science or religion?
When our ‘believers’ put up the Californian bushfires as evidence of climate change it is obvious they really don’t get it. This is not evidence at all. Already the rumblings out of California suggest that the authorities failed to reduce fuel loads in their forests and of course the fires were deliberately lit. Sound familiar?
It is hard to imagine that six billion people belching carbon dioxide into the atmosphere doesn’t have an effect – it must – however that effect has been proven to be very small and even harder to measure.
Our weather is influenced by Pacific Ocean temperatures resulting in the El Niño/La Niña effect.
Warm patches of water circling Antarctica which affects moisture content of our cold fronts and the Indian Ocean Dipole, which is an ocean current connecting the Pacific and Indian oceans. Little is known about this recently discovered current but it is thought to cause long dry spells. Add to this the heating and cooling cycles of the sun and you have a very complex picture.
All of these forces have been shown to run in cycles as does our weather/climate. Data shows that what we have experienced at the turn of this century – severe drought and prolonged dry conditions – are exactly the same conditions that were experienced at the turn of the previous century. Incidentally, both turn of the centuries were characterised by a peak in the sun’s heating cycle.
In all of this there is one thing that I will agree with our ‘believers’ and that is our dependence on oil as a fuel for transport. Oil reached its peak production years ago and its price will only keep rising which has the potential to destroy us economically long before we are wisps of glowing plasma.
