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Canberra Today 13°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Letters / The hydrogen fuel era has arrived

Letter writer Dr DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, of Deakin, has “a strong feeling” that the era of hydrogen fuel has arrived.

IN his column “Women take on climate-change malaise” (CN, November 5), Robert Macklin quotes an email in which independent federal MP Zali Steggall wrote: “Covid… could be a blessing in disguise if we grasp the opportunity to use government investment to build a green recovery”.

In my letter of October 29, I described how surplus electricity produced by eastern Australia’s increasing number of solar farms and burgeoning number of rooftop solar panels, which is frequently dumped, could be used to generate hydrogen by electrolysis of water – a process that emits only life-supporting oxygen.

My suggestion was not site-specific. As it happens, the ACT is ideally suitable for an electrolytic hydrogen generation plant. Canberra is connected to the eastern Australia electricity grid, and (usually) has plenty of fresh water, unlike the $50 billion Asian Renewable Energy Hub proposed for the west Pilbara region.

I have a strong feeling that the era of hydrogen fuel has arrived.

Dr Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

So not so, Mr Moore

MICHAEL Moore’s column of November 5 (“Will Libs finally have a chance at government?”) contains the statement that “our incarceration rates are increasing exponentially”. Michael would do well to learn the meaning of the word “exponential”.

Not only are they not increasing exponentially – a preposterous claim – they are in fact decreasing. As per the ABS, there was a decrease of four per cent from 2018 to 2019 (this year’s figures are released in a few weeks).

If “CityNews” purports to be a serious newspaper it should not allow its columnists to state inflammatory mistruths as fact.

John Noble, Braddon 

Conservatism’s shrinking iceberg

RIC Hingee’s letter (“Egos get in the way”, CN, November 5) succeeded in making me think: leaders’ big egos reflect a desire for, or achievement of, power – most often political. 

But this is common to all parties, large or small. The elephant in the room is that conservative voters in Canberra can be likened to a group that have been, and remain, on an iceberg broken away from the Antarctic. 

As the Socialist sun has become hotter in our schools and greenish institutions over the past 20 years, the iceberg has become smaller and many have slipped silently into pacific waters, realising they no longer have a voice. 

Some critics will cleverly put it down to climate change, but the best those Canberrans on the iceberg can hope for in the foreseeable future is to survive long enough to be washed up on a beach where the worst they can suffer is sunburn, albeit Socialist. 

Colliss Parrett, Barton

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