I support Ted Morine’s letter panning the climate change resolution.
Concerning the Press’s note citing “scientific consensus” that human activity is the predominant source of the greenhouse gas increase, if scientific consensus were always correct, then Newton and Einstein would have been failures. We should rely more on scientists who studied not just theories and models but actual climate data Many of us recall the scare of the 1970s, when it was thought that global cooling would lead to famine and other deleterious effects; that has not occurred and should give pause to those who once again cry wolf about the climate.
Climate models predicting catastrophic warming are grossly exaggerated, in my opinion. In looking at the history of climate over the past 3,000 years, average temperatures have been significantly higher than they are today. The warming over the past 50 years is a recovery from the “little ice age” of the 1700s; climate is not yet back to the average.
Since much of the world’s carbon dioxide is stored (absorbed) in the oceans, I believe the natural warming from the little ice age, not caused by the increase in carbon dioxide, results in carbon dioxide increase through outgassing of the oceans as the oceans warm from the recovery from the little ice age. The natural increase in carbon dioxide due to warming from the little ice age would therefore occur whether or not we reduced our own emissions.
Voting for the resolution would have effects ranging from nil to increasing hunger and poverty among the less fortunate people of the world, who would be deprived not only of the food from plant life which relies on increased carbon dioxide, but also of the energy needed to feed themselves as well as lift themselves out of poverty. While there are better ways to produce energy than burning carbon fuels and thus producing carbon dioxide, nuclear and fusion energy are not yet available in the quantities needed (and solar and wind energy are currently inadequate to serve their needs).
Stephen Richter
Hynes Lane
Editor’s note: The 240 scientists who authored the latest report of the United Nations sponsored intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR6) conclude that human activities, not natural processes, are “unequivocally” responsible for the dramatic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere since around 1750. Human-induced climate change, the authors conclude, is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since the group’s previous report. The latest report, released in August, was reviewed and endorsed by members of the 195 participating governments of the IPCC. (See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, Cambridge University Press.)
