To the Editor,
Re: Global warming predictions fail to materialize, Letters, June 4.
Another writer seems to believe that observing the local weather trumps weather observations made worldwide. Really.
Gordon Pratt also states that ‘few’ of the prognoses of the ‘global warmers’ have come true.
In a perverse way he is correct: scientific predictions of the rate of climate change have been conservative; i.e. the planet’s weather is changing faster than originally predicted.
Given the overwhelming evidence that the climate is undergoing rapid changes, that northern countries are now trying to figure out who gets to extract the fossil fuels from the increasingly ice-free arctic, or that the Pentagon has now concluded global climate change is a far greater threat to the United States than global terrorism due to the expected displacement of hundreds of millions of (mostly poor) people, it may be comforting to some that we had a cooler spring than normal.
Last, Pratt writes that taxing energy so as to reduce its demand harms the poor. Yep. Higher oil prices do raise food prices and so do harm poor people.
Our collective failure to switch from the depleting supplies of fossil fuels, with demand increasingly outstripping the supply, is the principal source of higher food prices.
Add the perverse and unethical idea of removing land from food production so as to produce ethanol to fill up our cars at the pumps is threatening the food supply and is harming the hungry.
If the writer cared the least about the poor he would be advocating for renewable solar, wind, tidal and such energy (which is enough to power our world and reduce oil prices), not pointing his finger at those who are.
Ian Gartshore
Nanaimo