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Climate change deniers spread misinformation

The fossil fuel industries funnel a lot of funds to front groups that deny our responsibility for climate change.

To the Editor,

Re: Global warming trend could actually be slowing down, Letters, Jan. 5.

The fossil fuel industries funnel a lot of funds to front groups that deny our responsibility for climate change. Climate deniers get their info from such groups, certainly not from peer-reviewed scientific reports.

According to The Guardian, Exxon Inc., a former funder of these groups, knew in 1981 that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change – but subsequently spent $30 million to convince us otherwise.

It was bad enough that tobacco companies mislead the public about the dangers of their product, killing many thousands of people.

It is quite another that the same kind of propaganda may very likely lead to the death of millions of people and enormous damage to both world economies and planetary health.

That this misinformation is still being published in papers such as the Nanaimo News Bulletin is testament not to ‘journalistic neutrality’ but to the power of corporate-backed PR companies manipulating well-meaning folk to spread their misinformation, both locally and elsewhere.

Ian GartshoreNanaimo

 

To the Editor,

During a recent U.S. Senate hearing, the head honcho of the Sierra Club repeatedly stated that 97 per cent of scientists believed that the Earth was warming. The chair of the committee stated that according to satellite-gathered statistics, the Earth had in fact not shown any temperature increase over the past 18 years. Another report claims that while the Arctic is shedding ice at an alarming rate, the Antarctic ice is actually increasing.

It seems that the scientific community is as polarized on environmental opinions as the U.S. population is on politics. Opinions are a dime a dozen while actual facts are shaded according to who is quoting them – a clear case of the old adage ‘Don’t confuse me with facts when my mind is made up.’

Political correctness now dictates that global warming is a fact and anyone disagreeing with this position is now denigrated as a ‘denier.’ I truly wish I knew just what the actual situation was.

There is no doubt that the world is currently experiencing episodes of extreme weather in many corners of the globe. As of now I have yet to see any viable theories to explain such events. It is my hope that these life-threatening weather-related phenomena will be the prioritized subject of serious study and that in due course a believable explanation will be forthcoming, and if it’s not too much to hope, perhaps some way of mitigating the severity of these traumatic storms.

Garry BradfordNanaimo