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Dear Editor,
Your e-mail of April 22nd [“An Alarming Trend” by Isaac MacMillen and Robert Romano] does not accurately reflect the concerns which scientists are dealing with. The melting ice sheets that will cause islands to become submerged and sea levels to rise are the Greenland Glaciers, the Alaska Glacier and the Canadian Glaciers, all of which are currently on land and not supported by water or in the water. One can compare aerial photos of today’s glaciers with 10 year old photos and see the difference. When the runoff from these glaciers passes from land to water, it is the equivalent of adding water to a full glass of ice water. The glass will overflow, just as some land will disappear when the land based glaciers melt. You are generally thoughtful person. You need to put a little more thought into glacier melting.
Sincerely,
Clare Whitbeck
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Dear Clare,
I do certainly appreciate your reply. Mr. MacMillen and I certainly did take into account glacial melting, but do not believe it is cataclysmic in nature nor any cause for government action to “change” the climate. The fact is that not all glacial melting results in water reaching the sea. And the melt that does reach is not cataclysmic as the predictions would have us believe. Nor is the melt controllable.
If it were cataclysmic, Long Island where I grew up—created by glacial deposits—should have been submerged when the Ice Age glacier receded. The fact is, the glacier receded thousands of miles without a concurrent increase in sea levels submerging land mass. In fact, it created new land masses through glacial deposits.
Certain islands are disappearing, like the Hawaiian Islands or Long Island, but not because of rising sea levels, rather because of erosion. Other areas, like New Orleans, are sinking because river deposits were diverted.
Nonetheless, to the extent that certain areas do become submerged over the course of geologic history, the only thing humans can do about it is move.
We cannot control the climate anymore than we can control the weather.
The number one greenhouse gas is water vapor. Over 90 percent of it. Without it, life as we know it would not be sustainable. And we certainly have no way of controlling the level of water vapor in the air.
And with carbon gases, we again are not creating any new carbon. Carbon is extracted from the earth, reintroduced into the air, etc. But it does not stay there. The plants eat it. And then again it gets redeposited into the earth.
Again, something else we generally do not control. We can no more speed up the process of plants eating carbon than we can slow it down. Suffice to say, without the carbon element, life would not be possible and to pass laws restricting the extraction of carbon from the earth and reintroducing it into the environment is foolish.
This is not causing the glaciers to melt any faster than they would have. Those have grown and receded countless times before without any human activity, and it is actually arrogant on mankind’s part to believe we control this process. Nature has all the influence. We are subject to her. Not the other way around.
The choice energy and fuels will be based on efficiency, not on flawed climate projections or a belief that somehow we can change the climate by reorganizing our economy to reduce output.
We believe that climate change “science” has become a political tool to enact policy changes with a far different motive from somehow “fixing” the climate. We believe that the real intent is to bring America to her knees economically. And even if that is not the real intent, that is what carbon cap and trade, the Kyoto protocols, or any of a number of other proposals to restrict carbon emissions will do.
And then, would the intent really matter?
We’ve already seen in 2008 what too-costly-energy does to the American economy, and the American people. It’s devastating. The purpose of carbon cap policies is to artificially increase the price of carbon-based energies in order to move to different forms of energy that are less efficient. The whole process will destroy millions of jobs, reduce our economic output, and devastate the global economy—especially to developing regions that do not have access to adequate agriculture.
For example, food inflation occurs through ethanol production—a supposed alternative to fossil fuel, making feeding the developing world twice as expensive.
And even without ethanol, increasing the cost of transportation to unsustainable levels by increasing the cost of energy will be devastating to the global economy, eventually lead to mass starvation, civil unrest, and wars. And then, the ability to enact carbon caps will be eliminated.
So, what is the sense of a carbon cap? And besides computer model predictions that time and again are proven to be considerably flawed: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm, what evidence has been presented to the American people besides billions of dollars of advertising by political and corporate interests that makes a series unprovable claims?
“Man-made” climate change is a myth. Thank you for your thought-provoking email.
Sincerely,
Robert Romano
Senior Editor of ALG News Bureau
