The scientists have been warning that extreme events would plague the world for over 30 years if we did nothing to revert the global warming due to increasing CO2 emissions. Their theories seem to have the best explanation for what is happening while those in power do nothing. They claim that Australia is insignificant and therefore should be helpless. Imagine if we had used that argument in WW2 or other conflicts where the world stood against tyranny. We are small but do contribute and have led the world in anti-smoking legislation and gun laws to name a couple of areas.

Our PM and his mates need to start doing more than talk. Advertising slogans will not work here. We need a national plan and not garbage about holding hoses or else he may as well have stayed in Fiji. We need leaders willing to listen to experts not self-proclaimed crackpots. Perhaps the scientists are the messengers that Mr Joyce has been ignoring at our peril.

Steve May,

Tamworth

I as well as many others offer our sincere gratitude to the fire fighters of the region (ie New England and surrounds).

Their bravery, their resolution, their tenacity is without doubt the pinnacle of humanitarian aegis (protection).

To other firefighters of the states of Australia again our sincerest of thank yous for your tireless efforts to protect the communities and their inhabitants.

In my humble opinion the firefighters of the whole of the continent are worthy of an Australian civic award like [sic] AO for their meritorious deeds to save human lives and property.

It is not a big ask, a token of gratitude by the Australian government for the above reasons would be well received.

Greg Daly,

Limbri

When I see so many Australians caught up in dire predictions of climate catastrophe, I have to wonder, are our memories so faulty? How quickly we have forgotten the so called Mayan Apocalypse scare peddled by new Age authors, the Y2K bug peddled by tech-heads, the threat of global cooling and a new ice age that scientists warned us about in the 70's and so many other false scares.

There was mass hysteria around the world in 1910 due to faulty science, people believed that Halley comet would poison the atmosphere and kill us all. Every generation has its silly scares like this, sometimes peddled by otherwise reputable people. Collective delusions like Y2K are now buried under collective amnesia, despite how seriously this was taken by government, business, media and computer technicians ta the time.

We don't seem to lean from these mistakes, nor reflect on how wrong we have been in the past over simplar apocalyptic predictions. Global cooling was one the trendy scare pushed by scientists, that morphed into global warming, which morphed into climate change, and now that's morphed into a climate emergency. It's clear at this point that a semantic game is being played, which has nothing to do with science or rational thought.

The term 'climate change' is Orwellian doublespeak, it means whatever activists want it to mean, since the climate has always changed it's redundant to speak of climate change as something new. While the term 'climate emergency' is just an escalation of language because the Lefts and Greens aren't happy with election results, they can't accept that we have a conservative government and the Australian public voted for this, so now climate change activists are set on subverting the democratic process by getting a climate emergency declared.

Climate activists are going to be so disappointed when the world doesn't end, we'll probably forget in 20 years what the big deal was about, like we have forgotten so many other similar scares. In the meantime, we have convinced out children that 'there won't be a planet' and they will all be dead soon, which is needless to say, a form of child abuse and psychological trauma.

Daniel Peckham, Tamworth

Environmentalists and the Greens in certain sections of the media and at the assertion of conservative "right wing" politicians like Barnaby Joyce, have effectively been made the scapegoat, the "blamegoat", for the bushfire calamity which has most of eastern Australia on a disaster footing waiting for the next dreadfully hot day, and the next big gust of wind, to start another catastrophic fire.

If you want to get an objective view of who and what to blame, to some rational and practical extent, then best you don't tune in to Sky News or rely on the opinion of self anointed scribes in the right wing media in general whose opinions to date, as you could certainly expect, have been "politically motivated", as in an excuse to ram their own anti-Greens and anti-environmentalist convictions down everyone's throat, while gleefully and blissfully ignoring a lot of facts and evidence which dispels at least most of the accusations levelled at the policies of the Greens to do with bushfire management, namely controlled burn-offs.

For the record, I am not a member of the Greens, I am not a member of any political party, not even an activist group. I have no political motivation whatsoever to write this. I am simply calling out what is absolute bullcrap.

The Greens, and at least a big percentage of environmentalists in Australia, are actually very respectful of controlled burn-offs of forest according to "Aboriginal tradition and customs".

The fact is, many, not saying all, people in positions of authority in fire fighting units across Australia are not respectful of controlled burn-offs of forest according to "Aboriginal tradition and customs". Their approach to controlled burn-offs is gungho and "come as she goes". No thought, where such applies for example, of sparing 200 year old trees from fire damage by creating a fire break around them to engage in an otherwise necessary controlled burn off.

Logistically it might well require a lot more prior planning, but simply what the Greens and most sensible environmentalists champion for, and there are a lot of them, is that controlled burn-offs are conducted with respect to not allowing certain old growth trees, and things of "Aboriginal heritage and significance", like a rock feature in a bushland setting, to be encroached upon by a controlled burn off fire.

If you don't think that is reasonable then you're not reasonable. Sorry to tell you. It's you and not the Greens and environmentalists whose views on controlled burn-offs is skew-whiff.

Besides the issue of controlled burn-offs, I would be amiss to not also make mention of the 80% or so cuts, yes that much, which the present NSW government has made to rural firefighting services and units. Get your head around that - 80%. I am not sure about the other states, including Queensland, but Gladys Berejiklian, that's the NSW premier, and her razor gang, have completely gutted the logistical resources and capabilities of rural fire services in NSW. That's got to hurt. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars that they've lost in funding.

Next time someone tells you that the Greens and the Bob Brown types are the bushfire menaces of Australia, tell them to come off the grass and not believe everything they read, hear and see.

Tim Badrick, Laidley, QLD

I think it should be a criminal offence to allocate water for mining while agriculture really gets none.

John Clark, Ewingsdale NSW

Have your say, send a letter to the editor