Ian Dunlop's observations promote flurry of letters to The Age

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his group of letters in today’s Melbourne Age are worth a few minutes, they are all about climate change and Ian Dunlop's observations –

Ian Dunlop’s warming

Ian Dunlop's warning (Comment, 7/4) is especially sobering. The slowing of atmospheric temperature rise over the past 15 years or so, used by climate change sceptics to debunk the work of the IPCC, is, on the contrary, evidence that the solar energy delivered to the Earth is being absorbed by the oceans. The Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are acting as giant dampers to contain temperature rise in the oceans. When both of these ice sheets melt away in the next decade or so, the rise in both ocean and atmospheric temperatures will accelerate rapidly and demonstrate that the passing of the tipping points that Dunlop expresses concern about has, indeed, occurred.

There can hardly be clearer evidence that the future of our planet is squarely in the hands of our politicians. Dunlop  calls on Australian "stateswomen to step forward". I think it will need concerted action by statespeople of both genders and probably all political persuasions to haul us out of the dangerous intellectual lethargy into which we have been led.

Associate Professor Maurie Trewhella, Victoria University

We had a stateswoman

We had a stateswoman, Ian Dunlop. Her name was Julia Gillard. Everything she did to tackle climate change has been dismantled and reversed by this draconian government. I despair for my grandchildren and fail to see how supposedly intelligent parliamentarians can be so shortsighted, given most of them also have families.

Carmen Hilton, Hampton Park

Reasons to be optimistic

In contrast to the pessimism of Ian Dunlop, I think there is every reason for the global economy to continue to grow until all citizens reach the West's standard of living. Climate change need not be feared. Modern coal-fired power stations are more than three times as efficient as they used to be,  while the significantly reduced emissions can be liquefied and then used, increasingly, in greenhouses and chemicals such as formic acid and fuels, or, at worst, permanently sequestrated under a layer of silt and 3000 metres of seawater. All this can be done while reducing the cost of electricity by 10 per cent. Meanwhile renewable energy is constantly advancing. The greening of the planet can occur through the piping of fresh water using large, flexible plastic tubes to areas that need it. But Dunlop is correct that current government actions are not enough and that more needs to be done.

John Martin, chief executive, Docklands Science Park 

We must break party political deadlock

George Marshall speaking in Melbourne this year.

I recently attended a workshop run by George Marshall, author of “Don't Even Think About It: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change”, where he showed us a video of one of Maggie Thatcher's speeches and how she communicated her message on climate change. Her audience was the Conservative Party room. She appealed to the values of the group with words like balance, stability, fairness, reality, leadership, duty, respect, health, faith, freedom. It was seen to be an issue we care about – us, not them.  It was not a science-based argument. The ownership of it was  a strong part of the attraction,  and it drove the emotional connection behind the Conservatives then determining to take action.

Now, not believing in climate change is a stronger identifier of those who consider themselves conservatives than gun control and the "right to life". With such entrenched party positions, perhaps Dunlop is right and the only hope we have is to take a different tack – look at it with a gender lens. We must shift this "right/left" way of seeing the greatest threat to all our lives.

Carolyn Ingvarson, Canterbury