Dear Editor,
I agree with Mr. Dyer in his last week’s article on one point: Climate change is non-linear. That is simply stating the obvious since climate is always changing, usually in totally unpredictable ways. The idea that this represents an emergency is much less convincing.
Short term predictions are futile when considered against the Earth’s 4.6-billion-year existence, but let’s consider just the last 2000 years. During that relatively brief period, we had the Roman Warming Period with the earth even warmer than today, followed by the Dark Ages which were cooler. Then the Medieval Warming Period with temperatures at least as high as today, then the Little Ice Age that drove the Vikings out of Greenland. Not one of these events can be attributed to human activity. The last 300 years have gradually warmed by about 1 degree Celsius but this began a century before the general use of fossil fuels. Consider this – practically none of the students in high school today have seen any measurable warming in their lifetimes.
Carbon dioxide has had little or no correlation with temperature fluctuations. Does it seem probable that a colorless, odourless gas, essential for plant life, which represents a mere .04 percent of the atmosphere, can drive climate change practically all by itself?
Life on Earth is made possible by the Sun, which we orbit, sometimes slightly nearer, sometimes slightly further away. Periodically the sun shoots immense flares of burning gases toward us. Has anyone sat beside a camp fire? Do you see any similarities?
The climate is affected by thousands of factors, most of which we have very limited or, more often, no knowledge of at all. It’s time to stop listening to alarmists and do your own research. You will be surprised to learn that for real world scientists, the science is far from settled.
Terry Hamre