The advocacy group was formed in 2007 and since 2009, convener Lizette Salmon has taken copies of the letters submitted to the editor.

"I wanted to get a feel for community sentiment on climate change, and this is one way of gauging that," she said.

"I think there's a lot of anger, fear, and frustration out there at the moment, and it's coming out in the letters.

During Australia's hottest and driest year on record, in 2019, letters on the topic jumped to 84, up from the previous record of 68 letters in 2011.

Each year since 2009, there have always been more 'accepters' than 'deniers', and a third of letters in 2019 were by the latter, second only to 2011 when letters disputing climate change peaked at 30 with the introduction of the carbon price.

"We have more pillars of society who are speaking up; when the school strikes happened, banks, churches and universities supported it, and that backing wasn't there 12 years ago," Ms Salmon said.

WATCH chair Lauriston Muirhead said public opinion was become more attuned to climate change, but political leadership wasn't.

"I read about climate change in 1975, and the science was settled then," he said.

"The woman that discovered that CO2 warms the planet did that in 1856.

"She didn't know that we were adding to it, but all you've got to do is get two clear plastic bottles, put thermometers in them, add Co2 to one, and it gets hotter - they do it on Mythbusters.

"To stop the heating of the planet, we need to urgently transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

"[But] there's no plans, by Labor or Liberal, for how to get the guys and girls in the coal industry into other jobs," he said.

"Germany has done that; they haven't made one miner redundant.

"What deniers don't realise is that we shouldn't be afraid of the changes we need to make; there are enormous opportunities of jobs and financial benefits.

"The jobs are there in the clean energy. we're going to need more lithium, more aluminium - we don't want to stop mining, we're trying to stop the mining of fossil fuels."

Mr Muirhead said world markets would move towards renewables whether Australia was prepared or not.

"Scott Morrison is using the words 'the new normal' - it's not the new normal, it's a dot on an increasing trajectory ... and there will be variability," he said.

IN OTHER NEWS:

"We've just had the driest, hottest Australian year on record.

"Yes, Australia is set up for a burning bush, but not at the temperatures we're seeing.

"We can't adapt to 50 degrees - we don't want to live in a country where basically everyone is living underground, like Coober Pedy."

WATCH was the first climate change advocacy group on the Border and sends a monthly newsletter to about 800 subscribers.