Matthew Lambourne, Mullumbimby
Barnaby is back, and the Government’s laughable ‘climate policy’ could, believe it or not, get even worse.
Meanwhile, in the real world, a study published a couple of weeks ago Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth’s Heating Rate (doi:10.1029/2021GL093047) looks at the increase in energy reaching the Earth’s surface as a result of increasing greenhouse gases and related feedbacks, and finds that it has more than doubled between 2005 and 2019.
The study also looks at a completely separate data set, of the amount of heat taken up by the atmosphere, the oceans, the land and the melting of ice and snow, and the results closely match the increase in incoming energy, again more than doubling between 2005 and 2019.
This means that the effect of greenhouse gases is accelerating, despite the rather feeble actions many countries have taken to reduce their emissions. Further evidence is the fact that despite COVID lockdowns and a decrease in emissions from fossil fuels last year, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by the same amount as in previous years.
As the late scientist Wallace Broecker famously said, ‘Climate is a wild beast, and we are poking it with sticks.’
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
