Re: Growing trees for climate change (B.C. Views, May 11).
Tom Fletcher has had some really good articles regarding climate change recently. Anyone who argues against this topic nowadays is considered a heretic.
I recall being a teenager in the 1970s and reading in the authoritative National Geographic that we had an impending Ice Age coming! The end was nigh. It was unstoppable. Cold evenings felt even colder. Shortly after that I also recall that mainstream media told us that the world was going to run out of oil.
Do we have global warming? I think so. I also recall 40 years ago heading up to work in the inlets and valleys of the Coast of B.C. as a young forester. I was amazed at the vivid evidence of retreating glaciers in the mainland valleys, and the barren transition zone between where the ice was and where the trees were.
But forestry school had prepared me for this fact. We were taught that only 10,000 years ago Vancouver was under ice a mile thick from the prior Ice Age. Global warming occurred and thankfully this ice has melted, exposing our beautiful coast for us to enjoy today.
Humans can’t stand change. Especially weather. Weather is always “extreme” in the media. Weather sells. It sells because extreme weather fundamentally scares us.
Do we have climate change? Absolutely. Do humans contribute to climate change? Absolutely. However, be careful about joining the sheep on this subject.
Be open minded and be thankful we aren’t now in that imminent Ice Age. Brrrr.
Otto Schulte
Black Creek
