Might as well face it ...
SOMETIMES I think that the coal addicts at the Right of the political spectrum just act like any other addict. They cannot see the big picture as they are too concerned with their personal problems.
The first edition of the National Energy Emission Audit written by the Australian National University’s Professor Hugh Saddler finds that Australia’s total energy emissions have increased. Nevertheless the above mentioned coal addicts call for more of the same. It has been a long time since Einstein pronounced that a problem cannot be solved by the very measure that caused it in the first place.
The same is true for other environmental problems. We lose species because of habitat destruction. That’s why there are internationally binding agreements like the Ramsar Convention that protect important wetlands like the 43ha at Toondah Harbour in Queensland, providing habitat for tens of thousands migratory shorebirds, including the critically endangered eastern curlew. That important area is currently under threat of development, despite its listing. Rich people extravaganzas like a marina and up-market housing are planned. Unfortunately, Minister Frydenberg has given it the go-ahead. What do those politicians think? Do they think at all? Do they feel an obligation to their children and grandchildren to leave some of our wild places?
Flunked science
THE fossil fuel dinosaurs have been busy of late with smug letters stating carbon is no problem.
It would that they failed to pass chemistry and physics at school, as they exhibit no understanding of science whatsoever, nor present any academic credentials to back any of their claims.
Denial or scepticism?
IT is clear most correspondents contributing to the climate change debate do not know or have forgotten the philosophy of scientific inquiry. If they did, they would not be so quick to label anybody questioning the “science” as being deniers.
In this postmodern age, it is confusing to ascertain what is the definition of a sceptic and perennial questioner, and who should be labelled a denier.
Deniers, with their association with those who do not accept the photographic and documented evidence of the Nazi Jewish Holocaust era in Germany, are obviously a sub-optimal sect. Such a definition for people who asked or presented inconvenient evidence about global warming, now homogenised to climate change, seems an important point to clarify.
“Cogito ergo sum” or rather, “I think, therefore I am,” was the simple but profound statement declared by Rene Descartes in the 17th century. Aptly, a century later Antoine Leonard Thomas further interpreted Descartes’s proposition to “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”. Philosophically, these statements encapsulate the basis of academic thought that began with Socrates persistent questioning in ancient Greece. Socrates was executed in 399BC for asking too many inconvenient questions. A new way to have your say themercury.com.au readers have a new way to have their say. It’s free to use, just register and have your say. For more details and to register, visit the website.
These concepts are the foundation of scientific inquiry, which see the discarding of inferior hypotheses and the continual improvement of those that have merit.
This asks the question, why should it be considered acceptable scientific practice in the pursuit of climate change science enlightenment to label one group of questioners as deniers because they ask wrong or inconvenient questions?
Go it alone
WHAT a splendid, practical Talking Point article by Leanne Minshull ( Mercury, June 10). Of course Tasmania should be self sufficient in energy.
We have solar for the daytime for schools, shops, factories and those at home. Geographically we are in the path of the Roaring Forties, winds which blow night and day and we have plenty of coast for offshore wind turbines.
Plus hydro-electric power for backup. I believe there are several small hydro schemes in mothballs which could be restarted. But not the Franklin!
The money proposed for a second Basslink cable could be used first for local energy producers. After we become self sufficient we can start exporting.
In the aftermath of American President Donald Trump’s pulling out of the Paris Agreement, many US cities and states are going alone along the economical and self sustaining path of renewable energy.
As our Federal Government fiddles while the climate hots up, Tasmania can be independent in power.