PLEASE allow me to explain to Jim Taylor (GCB, 8/7) the basic undeniable facts about global warming.

The world’s temperature has never been constant – that would be too much to expect of a body whirling around in space on several eliptical orbits. It has always been getting either colder or warmer.

The last cooling period peaked around 15,000 years ago and it has been getting warmer ever since. It has been doing this ever since it was formed some four billion years ago, and mankind only started burning things at the tail end of that very long period.

Some scientists with Green leanings and a need to obtain funds for their research came up with the idea that this current warming phase (which started 15,000 years ago) might be largely caused by modern man creating carbon.

Many sceptical people who don’t need research funds to keep them employed think this is a long shot and are prepared to wait another 15,000 years to see if the normal cycle kicks in again. They are called ‘climate deniers’ by the ‘climate alarmists’. They don’t deny the world is warming because they know it is. But they do deny that the carbon idea the Green influenced scientists came up with is the main cause, and that we should sacrifice our hard-won quality of life by stopping using fossil fuels.

There are lots of scientists who have retained their critical faculties who support this: and lots of Greta Thunbergs who disagree. Such is life.

ALAN MIDWOOD, BUNDALL

JIM Taylor (8/7) has been here before. Last year he was busy quoting the “10,000-plus scientists” declaring that we are facing a climate emergency.

Closer examination reveals that one was a certain Mickey Mouse

from the Institute of the Blind. A good companion for Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy.

As well, an expert on animal behaviour, a psychiatrist, a psychologist. Not too many climate scientists.

Mr Taylor excoriates “a retired fireman and a delivery van driver” for daring to express a contrary view. Perhaps he would also like to disparage Professor Ian Plimer, head of Earth Science at Melbourne and Newcastle, who certainly possesses “more than on iota of university study.” Or Peter Ridd, Professor of Physics at James Cook University, Townsville. Or the late Dr.Bob Carter, author of “Climate, the Counter Consensus.” To name just a few.

Mr Taylor will need to do better than a bit of cheap name calling, unsupported by any hard evidence.

P.C. WILSON, MIAMI

DANIEL Andrews has become a victim of his own ideologies. A proud and frequent trumpeter of inclusiveness and the full gambit of things woke, his high moral ground has left his head in the fog. There’s nothing wrong with that as such but his love affair blinded him from the need to push his dreams with an even hand, for all Victorians.

If you run on a kit bag of pet ideologies alone you will inevitably run fowl of hypocrisy, a truism we’ll practised and proved by the left.

We have tippy-toed around the self-laid minefields of race and diversity for decades.

The tough COVID arena proved too easy to prosecute weekend fisherman but the thought of having to get tough on ethnic folk and radical protesters was just too much for this sensitive soul.

Maybe this hard lesson will make him a truly more inclusive leader.

KEITH MOUATT, ROBINA

TAKING a knee, the most recent being players from the England and West Indies teams before the first Test this week, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter cause is becoming an epidemic with sports people, celebrities, influencers and institutions showing atonement for racism and begging forgiveness.

While sympathetic, it seems the only constructive contribution white people can give to the Black Lives Matter debate is to acknowledge guilt and confess to racism by a ritual of self-abasement.

Children are expressing loss in knowing how to respond to peer pressure that they include a BLM hashtag on their posts to friends and express fear of being rejected and ridiculed by peers or labelled a white racist if they don’t conform.

Instagram accounts, aimed at children and devoted entirely to exposing interpreted racist or insensitive comments have been setup, putting children under intense political pressure to convert to the BLM cause.

Young people are easy targets and magnets to the latest theme making easy work for the moralists to convince being out of step is not cool and the need to fall into line or face a backlash from peers.

This battle to whitewash society is not about incarceration or between protestors and police but an ideological war to win the hearts and minds of our children.

CHRIS MAGILL, SURFERS PARADISE

AUSTRALIANS have been privileged with a freedom not enjoyed in much of the world, with a continent to share and no restrictions on past travel within its vast boundaries.

However, now there is an invasion by a silent foe. Queensland’s disciplined model example of border closure and social distancing