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Letters Short-sited on convention centre Given cost-effective Geelong convention centre alternatives, it would be poor form, irrespective of incentives, for Deakin University to forfeit prime waterfront real estate expansion opportunities. We live in and benefit from a university town underpinned by tiered educational excellence. The smart cities brand, embraced by advocacy groups that have pushed to varying degrees for what will prove to more than likely stymie future university expansion, remains a dime a dozen. Now the Andrews Government has allocated $1 million for the business case ahead of a $100 million build - taxpayer monies that could be more judiciously spent while still lifting the city’s stocks. Sensible state governance and attuned local advocacy from G21, Committee for Geelong and Geelong Chamber of Commerce, rather than dudding future university options, should have opted for due diligence and selection of the best option from the alternative sites: a privately funded Yarra Street Pier; a Mercure Hotel/stage five Skilled Stadium combo; or to the north of the Osborne House precinct. Richard Worland Manifold Heights
Nervous wait on fracking During 2015 the Andrews Government’s Parliamentary Inquiry into Unconventional Gas determined that gas mining, also known as fracking, posed a significant danger to Victoria’s well-established rural industries, environment, the health of communities and water supplies if allowed to proceed unregulated. Prior to announcing the government’s decision on the report’s recommendations, the then Minister for Resources, Lily D’Ambrosio, was shuffled out of her portfolio. The new minister, Wade Noonan, is now priming himself for the announcement. Many people in the broader Victorian community are concerned that the delays we are witnessing indicate that the government will not provide a total ban on gas mining, as many reports indicate it should, but will kowtow to the mining industry’s demands for access to the state’s gas resources. The people in the affected communities will not permit the unconventional gas mining industry to enter their communities unopposed because the well-documented risks to rural jobs, community welfare, health and the environment from this industry are too significant a threat to Victoria’s pristine environment and to those who produce Victoria’s food. Alan Manson Grovedale
More booze, more problems Are readers aware that City of Greater Geelong has in its wisdom decided to issue a planning permit for a bottle shop in Dumburra Avenue Clifton Springs? The liquor licence application is underway as I write. This is just crazy. The area is already serviced by at least four liquor outlets. Surely, with all the associated problems our community has with alcohol, we don’t need another bottle shop. I believe that another packaged alcohol outlet in the suburban area of Clifton Springs is the last
Email: editorial@geelongindependent.com.au 78 Moorabool St, Geelong, 3220 Fax: 5249 6799
Blanketed with CO2 heat
Buckets & Bouquets Bouquets to my neighbours for helping me with a blackout during bad weather last month. I didn’t understand my switchbox but they came out to help me get the lights back on. Much Appreciated, Belmont Buckets to the relevant government that allows some nursing homes and aged-care facilities to be without site-wide air-conditioning, notwithstanding that we are in the depths of winter. Air-conditioning ought be mandatory to ensure the comfort of clients and staff alike. Summer Is Coming, Geelong West Buckets to an arrogant woman in Torquay IGA’s car park on 2 August. Great way to show a learner how to drive, backing out straight in front of him then using two hands to wave while driving off. I pray prats like you don’t have to teach teenagers to drive. Steaming Mother, Torquay
I am sorry to write again so soon but I can’t let go by Alan Barron’s claim that “people don’t understand the role CO2 plays in the atmosphere” (Letters 29 July). He claimed that “CO2 is not some sort of thermal blanket, it’s a regulator of heat, shielding the Earth from the Sun’s powerful rays”. Here’s the way it actually works: CO2 only interacts with a section of the infrared part in sunlight but most incoming sunlight energy is in the range where CO2 has no effect, so all of it gets in. Most of this energy is then absorbed by things like plants and oceans. The absorbed energy causes the surface to warm up and, just as any warm body emits infrared, so does Earth. But now the outgoing infrared is in the CO2 interaction range and some is reflected back down again rather than going back to space. So the more CO2, the more heat radiation and the surface temperature goes up in response. This is what a blanket does and the basic physics has been understood since the 1800s. So while I might agree with Mr Barron’s first assertion, I do not think he is the right person to educate people on CO2 science. Jukka Tuisku Barwon Heads
Buckets to Wet Cat (Buckets and Bouquets, 29 July). Seal all of Kardinia Park’s car parking? At what cost? Far too much money has been squandered already to pamper a few footy fans at Simonds Stadium. Buy a brollie and boots. Disgruntled Taxpayer, Lara Bouquets to the kind person who found my expensive car keys near Geelong Railway Station, saw the Bendigo Bank tag and thought to hand it in at a branch of the bank for return to me. Alan, East Geelong Bouquets to a pair of lovely ladies who came to my aid when I had a fall in Bell Post Shopping Centre’s car park on 28 July. Thank you so much for helping me get up and walking me to the medical clinic. Margaret, Lovely Banks
Write to us… Bouquets to City of Greater Geelong school crossing supervisor Daniel, on hectic Latrobe Terrace. Dedicated Daniel’s reliable and cheerful manner in all types of conditions is invaluable and brightens my days. Keep up the great work, young man! JH, Geelong West
78 Moorabool St, Geelong, 3220 Email: editorial@geelongindependent.com.au Facebook.com/GeelongIndependent Fax: 5249 6799 Contributions must be less than 50 words and include the writer’s full name, address and phone number.
thing our community needs. This is our chance to say no more. Richard McNay Drysdale
an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary“. Tim Saclier Leopold
Hobgoblins of global warming
The Sun and the cycle
Jukka Tuisku is back (Letters, 29 July), denigrating those who don’t share his belief in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and imagining what we’re thinking. For example: “Tim Saclier is convinced global warming is a hoax“. Not so. We had a rise of .6C last century and none since. Whether human-induced CO2 caused it is the point of this debate. Mr Tuisku also wrote: “To prove it he invited readers to Google ’the 97 per cent consensus myth’ … funnelling readers to conspiracy websites”. Well, we need websites to champion good science and expose pseudo-science. I avoided specifying a particular website because rational people can make their own choices from Google’s array but an in-depth 47-page study of how the ‘97 per cent consensus’ scams were concocted is published in Friends of Science. It’s an attractive site and one of many showing that climate is more complex than an atmospheric trace gas. But Mr Tuisku prefers to cling to an 1800s hypothesis about the greenhouse effect that science is failing to validate. Ironically, pioneers of greenhouse gas science looked forward to the extra warmth to feed the world and to ward off the next ice age. Conventional climate science, in promoting catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, is so politicised that disaster is a selling point. As HL Mencken wrote: “The aim of practical politics is to keep the public alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with
True science demands scepticism and challenge. But global warming science actively shuts down any debate or challenge to its holy doctrine. Last week Jukka Tiusku asked: “How can the decades of climate science and mounting evidence, not to mention the basic physics going back to the 1800s, be so wrong?” It was a nothing statement designed to appeal to emotion and avoid rebutting specific claims by sceptics. Sceptics want debate and open discussion but it’s always denied as warmists play the man, not the ball. It’s simple to show that global temperature’s increase started around 1800 after the last Little Ice Age was ending and well before CO2 could have had any effect. It is variations in the Sun’s ability to heat the oceans that governs the Earth’s climate, not puny CO2. The Sun heats the oceans, causing atmospheric temperatures to rise and glaciers to recede. Henry’s Law tells us that a warming ocean will release CO2 into the atmosphere. Deforestation and burning fossil fuels also contribute. The IPCC stated that CO2 could have had a significant effect on global temperatures only since 1950 but, ironically, most of the warming since 1800 was between 1910 and 1945. All indications are that we have reached the top of a warming cycle, which last peaked around 1200. It’s all just part of the natural process. Peter Rees Bell Park
Dissembling dismantling Malcolm Turnbull denied any wrongdoing on Medicare but, if memory serves me correctly, a few months before the election his government changed by stealth two vital pieces of procedure under Medicare, one relating to pap tests and the other the osteoporosis tests. Particularly the pap test will affect elderly and vulnerable pensioners in more ways than one. This is not selling Medicare but is certainly dismantling it bit by bit. The biggest lie was the reason given for a double dissolution. I have heard three reasons since the election, none being the real one, so the government should tell the truth. K Lombard East Geelong
Poor ratings standard A lot of media attention focused on how Australia’s credit rating could be downgraded by Standard and Poors, but what does this really mean? In 2008, days before Lehmann Brothers collapsed, it had an A rating from Standard and Poors! In the US the three rating agencies were nicknamed ‘The Three Monkeys’ during the GFC because of their see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-noevil approach, which contributed to the GFC by giving ratings for fees. Over here 13 New South Wales councils sued them for their AAA rating of dodgy investments in which the councils lost money. We keep being told that Australia has great regulation and we don’t need a royal commission but where were the regulators on this one? Stephen Juhasz Geelong
Amanda’s ISSUE 17
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15 GEELONG INDY Friday, 5 August, 2016