Once again Todd Whitcombe is ringing the global warming alarm bells (Citzen, July 30) but should we be alarmed? Let's examine the facts.
Yes, temperature records are falling across the globe, but just last winter, cold records were falling too. In February, in the Canadian Arctic, cold was breaking records, described as some of the coldest temperatures that people have ever experienced. In Irkutsk, Siberia, they were completely unprepared for the extreme cold - in just one week, the cold killed 17 people and at least 70 others who suffered severe frostbite had limbs amputated.
In Rome, it snowed for the first time in six years and Naples got the heaviest snow in 50 years. In the Antarctic where it was summer, five metre thick sea ice forced a scientific research ship to abandon its mission. And for two years, ocean temperatures have been falling all over the globe.
As of the end of July this year, weather-related disaster losses as a percentage of global GDP were at a record low, and a 36-year study in Spain revealed that though temperatures have risen, fewer people are dying of heat, mainly due to air conditioning provided in large part, by fossil fuels.
Despite the current heat wave and accompanying fires, sources (including NASA) have determined that the total area burned by fires has been steadily declining, not just in the last 30 years, and not just in the last few hundred either. Before the Europeans came, California burned six times as much area on average as today.
Dr. Whitcombe says the Sahara dessert is expanding, yet other sources say it has shrunk by 300,000 square kilometers in the last 150 years. The latter would seem to make sense, since we know that 7,000 years ago when the globe was much warmer than now, the Sahara was lush and verdant, with marshes, lakes and rivers, teaming with wildlife and humans too.
Despite extreme weather events like the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico last year, hurricane activity, both frequency and intensity, has been in decline for decades. Tornado activity in the U.S. is almost at record low this year.
The current warming is part of a well-established natural pattern and while we are indeed at the mercy of the elements, we aren't doomed. A thousand years ago it was warmer than now, as well as 2,000 years ago. Both those eras were times of plenty, lots of food and significant human advancement, while the cooling periods that followed them (known as the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age) saw that advancement stall and populations plummet.
Dr. Whitcombe thinks we need to immediately cut emissions of greenhouse gases, but in reality, no government will ever take action that would result in significant reductions because the cost would be horrendous and the human suffering unspeakable.
A study (Fujimori et al.) determined that just meeting the Paris Accord target of limiting the rise to 2 C would result in an additional 84 million deaths due to hunger. According to the Green Climate Fund, their projects (costing $6.9 billion) have avoided the emission of 2 Gt of CO2.
If CO2 actually were the secret temperature control knob for the planet, that would cause a temperature reduction of - wait for it - 0.0015 C! Which would mean a drop of 1 C would cost us $4.6 trillion.
And that's not taking into account that there is no actual alternative to fossil fuels. Without them we regress into 17th century lifestyles. Let's be realistic - nobody will stand for that.
Art Betke
Prince George
