Editor:
Re: Warm-mongers ignore obvious, Jan. 3 letters.
Is it just naiveté or just plain stupidity that causes people to mouth off about the non-impact that humans have had on the environment to date.
Do they really believe that with the advent of seven billion people – and increasing by 80 million per day – polluting the earth with everything from their feces to the air that they breathe out to the garbage that is originally industrially created so that they can dispose of it later, over the last say 150 years, that this has had no impact on the world and has not resulted in global warming or climate change?
Unbelievable! All experts aside, if you just think of it logically, millions of vehicles turning fossil fuels into huge amounts of gases, thousands of power stations/cement plants/mines all converting fossil fuels into huge amounts of gases, humans denuding the planet of tropical and other forests hence dramatically reducing nature’s ability of converting huge amounts of human produced bad gases back into good gases (photosynthesis), overeating etc.
How could you not believe this has had any impact on the earth, resulting in some global warming?
I agree there is a natural progression of cooling and heating of the planet’s environment. But to think we have had no effect on the rate of natural warming or reduction in the rate of natural cooling by our greed for gratification is just plain stupid.
Ask all the people who have died around the world from droughts and the like what their opinion is on global warming.
Ivan Scott, Surrey
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The letter writer states that in the past 70 years, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen from 0.028 per cent to 0.039 per cent. That is an increase of over 39 per cent, a significant difference.
The writer claims a large portion of that increase is due to volcanos. On Feb. 15, 2007, the scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory wrote: “Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually… Because while 200 million tonnes of CO2 is large, the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than one per cent of that value.”
The writer suggests that the earth’s temperature has been stable for the past 15 years. In fact, the oceans have been absorbing a lot of thermal energy as they warm up, and the glaciers have been doing likewise as they melt. The earth has been warming even faster than most scientists had predicted.
The writer suggests “global warming” was invented for the sake of research grants. I disagree! Objective reasoning is a difficult thing for all people, but scientists definitely do better at it than the rest of us.
Bill McConnell, Surrey
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Whether we wish to be ostrich-like and ignore global warming, or take a reasoned approach and look at all the evidence is, in the end, up to us.
Regardless, the most recent detailed research from the British MET and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration assessed temperature change in a more detailed manner than had been done before. The report for the first time looked at all 10 different ways of measuring climate change – including sea level temp, upper atmospheric from weather balloons and glacier assessment.
The findings:
1) The world is unequivocally warming and it has for more than 30 years.
2) Variability in local temperature doesn’t mean the rest of the world is cooling.
3) Greenhouse gases are clear reasons for the 0.56 C (1 F) warming over the past 50 years.
The research concludes: “When we follow decade-to-decade trends using different data sets and independent analyses from around the world, we see clear and unmistakable signs of a warming world.”
Head-in-the-sand responses to such research can’t deny the unmistakable truth: no matter who delivers the pill, it is a bitter – but necessary – one to swallow.
Steven Faraher-Amidon, Surrey