I've heard our Nationals candidate Pat Conaghan twice on the subject of climate change (on the radio as he's been invisible at public forums I've attended). He is very wishy-washy on the matter of human influence on climate change.
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It's not as if "the climate" wakes up one morning and says "I feel like a change".
There have been many changes of climate over the aeons but all are a result of "forcing" factors which drive the long-term direction of climate. There are many things happening now that say that another climate shift is upon us. Glacial, Arctic, and Antarctic melting; excessive heat; weather disruptions; biosphere changes - the list is almost endless. No one doubts it.
There is unequivocal and unambiguous evidence that the main climate forcing factor this time is the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And the mechanisms by which CO2 can cause atmospheric warming have been known since the 1860s; it's long settled.
This source of CO2 is human activities - fossil fuels. Reserves of oil and gas are from decaying vegetation which took CO2 out of the air took hundreds of millions of years. We are now bringing back this vast amount of sequestered carbon in mere decades.
Mr Conaghan makes much of his legal and police prosecutorial skills. He has not done that with of climate change.
Climate may not say "I feel like a change", but I and many others surely do.
John Burman
Port Macquarie
