Far too much of the focus has been on declining or elevating averages.

We talk about a decline in the average rainfall or an elevation in the average temperature.

This tendency fails to give due consideration to the extremes which generate these average changes.

Averaged out over thirty years the Townsville floods give little insight into the devastation that was caused.

Likewise, the present drought conditions across large parts of Northern Victoria, Gippsland and Melbourne will depress the long term rainfall figures only slightly and yet, without a major correction, may well lead to one of the worst fire seasons in modern history.

Further afield little thought has been given to the potential consequences upon regional stability if the monsoons were to fail not once, as they did most recently in 2009 but in consecutive years.

It's time we stopped talking about average changes to the climate and focused instead on the potentiality of extremes so that we may be better prepared for a future that has already arrived.

Patrick Hockey, Clunes

Darryl Fallow writes in recent reports that Pacific island nations are justified in saying that Australia should do more to combat climate change.

He implicitly criticises Foreign Minister Marise Payne for fobbing off these nations' leaders with the claim that Australia is meeting its Paris accord emissions reduction commitments.

Australia's emissions have in fact been increasing since mid-2014, when the Abbott government repealed Julia Gillard's carbon price, which had been reducing emissions.

We now have Angus Taylor, the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, barracking for coal and new coal-fired power stations.

Mr Taylor and Mr Morrison should take heed of what is happening to our north. High-temperature records are being broken almost daily in Europe and the UK.

Australia is protected to a degree from extreme high temperatures by the enormous mass of ice in Antarctica. But eventually the heat will catch up with us and more Pacific islands will disappear underwater unless there is concerted world-wide action- including by Australia - to combat global warming.