This editorial is in response to Jim Lamberton’s letter to the editor (“Global warming is science fiction,” May 30 issue).
Lamberton’s letter was in response to an earlier editorial (“Global Warming effects worse than predicted,” May 23 issue).
The editorial was about Gwynne Dyer’s book, “Climate Wars” and how worsening climate and expanding weapons technology are combining to threaten not just our civilization but the survival of the human species. It mentioned British scientist James Lovelock’s prediction that global warming could cause Earth to become a planet of desert and scrub, except for a narrow band of forest around the poles.
In his letter, Lamberton said that Dyer and Lovelock are authors and trying to sell their books.
What they wrote was not science, he said, but science fiction.
Unfortunately, he did not explain why he made that statement.
Did he mean they were fear-mongering and motivated by greed? If that were the case, they would have made a good deal more money by joining the global warming deniers. Comparing the resources available to who oppose global warming with those of the fossil fuel industry is like (to borrow a phrase) putting a ball bearing into Yankee Stadium.
The editorial mentioned the Permian-Triassic event, when extreme climate change caused the creation of “Canfield oceans”, resulting in mass extinctions.
Lamberton’s response was, “Rumor has it we know this ‘fact’ because archeologists unearthed slate tables stating that, and they were signed by Dr. Suzuki and Al Gore!”
Humor has its place, but should not be used as a substitute for a valid argument. Sarcasm and ridicule also are not valid arguments.
The physics of global warming are well understood. We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. And we know that the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has been constantly rising since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Global warming deniers have a simple question to answer: If you believe that global warming is not happening, what physical process is preventing it?
If the temperature in your bed was just right with two blankets, and you now have three, why do you believe you are not getting warmer?
No reasonably intelligent and sane person would leave his or her grandchildren inside a locked car on a hot, sunny day. Yet that is precisely what we are doing through our refusal to adequately deal with global warming.
As we said in our earlier editorial, we need to start now to implement realistic solutions to global warming, such as a world-wide carbon tax.
