Having read your article written by Messrs Wilson and Petheram, I would like to pose a few questions relating to the tonnage figures quoted.
Firstly, how is it that if one burns one tonne of coal one would achieve a gain of approximately four tonnes of carbon dioxide?
My suggestion is that burning this one tonne of coal would possibly produce several cubic metres of carbon dioxide which weighs about 1 to 1.5kg per cubic metre, so therefore I think that these figures that they quote are at best misguided and at worst so erroneous to be labelled as blatant scare mongering.
Secondly, their argument that, by exporting our coal to others means that we are in fact guilty of producing these scandalous quantities of carbon dioxide over and above what the importing countries produce by actually burning the product, effectively a doubling up of the figures.
Thirdly, on my reckoning, the factor of 10 that they apply to the increase of emissions from motor vehicles does not tally with their own admission that 450 million tonnes of coal would produce 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2: a factor of less than four to one.
And lastly, whenever these people show pictures of polluting activities they have a very misleading tendency to show the vapour that is coming off the cooling towers at power stations,vapour that is in actual fact nothing more than steam, ie water. Then they show the smog-shrouded cities of the world - again this is not all CO2.
It is pretty much all particulate matter, (solid material) waste that is by and large unburnt material due to improper fuel to air ratios in the burning process, something that can quite easily be rectified albeit costly to do so.
To suggest that wind generators are the be all and end all of answers is purely dreaming. At an average rate of around five persons' power requirements per wind turbine, 22 million people in Australia equals over four million wind turbines.
I could go on almost indefinitely about the pros and cons of employment prospects, but will end by saying that to measure pollutant gasses in atmosphere don't confuse the issue by getting cubic metres and tonnes out of context, or maybe is it that the good people at BREAZE have gone off tilting at windmills?
I am in favour of a cleaner environment, albeit in a sensible and sustainable manner.
ALAN MCKENNA
Enfield