To the editor,
Re: Hype doesn’t help firefighting efforts, Opinion, July 20.
I question why your columnist Tom Fletcher continues to take up space with his regressive, outdated views.
In his latest column he cavalierly dismisses the view that B.C.’s major fires are due to climate change. Instead, he blames lightning storms, and excessive fuel loads in the forests exacerbated by beetle-killed dead trees. The pine beetle infestation has already been attributed to warmer winter weather caused by climate change so much of that fuel is possibly a secondary characteristic of the effect that he just cannot bring himself to acknowledge – human-caused climate change.
No one can say for sure why a particular storm occurs, but to outright deny that climate change is a possibility is to claim certainty when there is none either way. To say that we had a colder, wetter winter than normal and to use that as evidence against climate change is to demonstrate either willful ignorance or just a desire to fill up space in a misleading way.
To refuse to even contemplate the possibilities embraced by most scientists with better information and understanding and having to listen to his ill-informed rants weekly is becoming too much.
Liz Fox, Lantzville