I read with great interest Mr. Rash’s guest commentary in Saturday’s Herald, “There are no climate deniers, only skeptics of doomsayers,” and it raised a lot of questions for me that maybe he could answer.
He cites the little ice age and the medieval maximum as proof for his argument. The question here would be “what was the temperature in Los Angeles during that period?” What’s that? You don’t know? So what you’re claiming is weather for a “region” represents “global” facts. Sort of like looking out your window and seeing snow and deciding it’s that way everywhere.
He also mentions the Jurassic period and how carbon dioxide was five times what it is now. The Jurassic period was what 54 million years long? During that time plant life could evolve to handle that level of carbon dioxide. Currently on the planet, no plant life exists that could handle five times the level of carbon dioxide.
I make no claim that the climate on earth doesn’t change up and down, it’s a matter of how fast it does. Man does not cause climate change, but we effect the speed of climate change. We are squeezing millions of years into centuries and simply it’s a question of can the planet keep up?
The people who actually study this subject say “no, the planet cannot keep up,” people like Mr. Rash don’t believe them because they’ve been told these scientists are just trying to keep their jobs. It must be one heck of a secret society when an overwhelming majority of those scientists worldwide are saying the same thing. It’s a good thing we have those billionaires in the fossil fuels industry to protect us from those thousand-aires scientists. For more than 50 years people were convinced that cigarettes were harmless. Not because the facts weren’t there, but a little money placed in the right pockets raised doubt.
The fact is worldwide the temperature is rising, even with dips and doodles here and there, overall the temperature is rising quickly. How fast is too fast? Do we really want to wait to find out, or do we want to slow down our influence on the change?
So far the by-products of trying to move to a greener world seem to be cleaner air and water. Those certainly are terrible things.
Remember climate is worldwide numbers, weather is out your window, your state, your region and so on till it hits worldwide. Then it becomes climate. Thanks.
Larry Gilmore is a resident of Marysville.
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