Proof of changes

I WRITE in response to the letter What Climate Crisis? (Gazette, 29 July).
The writer, John Rodda, appears to be neither alert nor alarmed about the prospect of global warming.
Using the average temperature does nothing to measure global warming as it does not indicate extremes. Since 1998 figures indicate there has been slight cooling but the extremes in climate have never been recorded before.
It is interesting that he feels “this climate change business” is just a scam and he is just part of the 50 per cent of Australians who think so.
Perhaps he would be good enough to quote the source of such polls. Without naming the source, there is absolutely no vindication for his statement.
We are now observing real changes. Here are some examples:
– The Mt Kilimanjaro glacier, which has survived the past 11,000 years, is currently at risk of disappearing by 2020 if present rates of melting continue;
– Enormous tracts of Siberian peatlands, with vast stores of carbon, are beginning to thaw and release carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere;
– The Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica has lost volume as large chunks (some as large as the state of Rhode Island) have recently broken free;
– The annual surface area of Arctic sea ice has declined eight per cent over the past several decades;
– Plants and animals are changing their habitation ranges, sometimes dramatically, such as robins and mosquitoes in the Arctic that were previously unknown there.
– Himalayan and Tibetan glaciers are receding. Two billion people depend on their thawing for their water supplies.
And back home, in the spring, the water table at Pakenham has gone from just below the surface in previous years to more than 600mm below now!
If these instances are not global warming or climate change, then what are they?
As one Australian citizen, I prefer the role of risk management of the possibility of climate change to the denial that it is occurring. And if the heads of state don’t get serious about risk management Mr Rodda, there may be no livable environment as we know it for the benefit of generations to come.
Graeme Henderson,
Pakenham.