Jo Millar’s letter “Abbot needs to go” (31/5) is somewhat confused. It says “we have never heard what he stands for but we know what he stands against.” It says he intends to bring back “worker mobility” (ie Work Choices) and quite a few other policies. Rather contradictory!
I can assure you that Work Choices is not on the agenda. Work Choices was a good idea, but badly done. “Worker mobility” probably is on the agenda, and this will make it easier for Jo to get a job. Getting rid of the Carbon Tax will make it easier for Jo to pay bills – it might allegedly be levied on so-called “big polluters” but they will inevitably pass the costs on, with a bit added on.
Climate change is occurring – Tony Abbott agrees on that. However, Climate Warming Alarmism is “crap” to quote Jo’s word. Anyone with any scientific or logical education knows that. Just remember that all coal and oil is the result of plants extracting carbon dioxide from the air, and it then being buried in the earth. Burning the whole lot would do no more than return the carbon dioxide to the air, where it once was. Moreover, calcium carbonate (chalk, limestone, marble) forms more than 4 per cent of the earth’s crust. It was produced by small creatures extracting carbon dioxide from (rather acidic) seawater, which in turn came from the atmosphere. Thus at some past age the atmosphere had very large amounts of carbon dioxide which was removed by plants and shelled creatures. Wikipaedia notes that “Five hundred million years ago carbon dioxide was 20 times more prevalent than today, decreasing to 4–5 times during the Jurassic period and then slowly declining with a particularly swift reduction occurring 49 million years ago.” So the very high amount of carbon dioxide then did not prevent life on earth, and was happily used by plants and animals. Even if the current carbon dioxide concentration were to double, there would be no disaster.
Note that correlation does not equal cause. This is one of the elementary logical fallacies. Equating increased carbon dioxide in the air to warming climate as a cause because they are correlated, is like saying that because the rise in salaries of Methodist Ministers in New York correlates well with the price of whisky, then the increased price of whisky is due to the rise in the Ministers’ salaries.
We can only hope that Tony Abbott will become Prime Minister in less than a year, and we can then have a good government.
Dudley Horscroft
