Re "The Science of Earth is in Dispute" (P.G. Citizen, Opinion page letters, Dec. 23):
Mr. Barnes is certainly correct that the world atmosphere has gone through -- and will again -- massive variations in CO2 and other so-called greenhouse gas concentrations. In that sense it is not the planet that needs saving but human societies (and some though not all non-human communities) that have evolved and developed under the present's unusually favourable climatological regime.
Yes, this physical Earth has been way hotter and also, regionally and globally, much colder. But during none of those times past were there 7 billion people whose livelihoods, indeed whose very lives, depended on a system which now -- also for the first time ever - their own collective activity is radically altering. I seriously doubt that Mr. Barnes would enjoy being transported back to those millions-of-years-ago climatic states about which he is so complacent. Nor would he like to relocate even today to places like Mauritius as it submerges or the ever-growing margins of the world's deserts. In such areas, the disastrous outcomes of intemperate fossil fuel reliance are not just the objects of cozy armchair conjecture and letter-writing.
As for his strange arithmetic about Canada and its contribution to this problem, I must at least applaud his originality: no one else to my knowledge has ever thought of judging national contributions to this global problem scaled to spatial area, as opposed to the population, that is, per capita emissions. Yes, one can "dance the figures around to make them suit your desires" and this letter shows its author just might make it on one of those popular TV dance competition shows with his logic-break dancing!
Norman Dale
Prince George
