National Post (National Edition)
Climate conf lict
Re: This climate-change panel has cried wolf far too often. Rex Murphy, Oct. 13; Blame the activists, Kelly Mcparland, Oct. 12
Rex Murphy’s cynical article on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does a disservice to the organization. Scientists have been warning of a warming climate for decades by interpreting a complex system. Not easy or exact, but if you do not believe the scientists, open your eyes and look around you. The Arctic is warming, sea-ice is melting, tropical storms are increasing in intensity and frequency, carbon dioxide emissions are rising and so is the mean global temperature of the earth, sea-level is rising, ocean chemistry is changing such that coral reefs are dying. I could go on, but you get the idea.
The evidence is clear, the timing is irrelevant and dependent, in part on what, when, and how aggressively mitigation efforts are employed. Right now it does not look good and articles like this do not help change the conversation to one of positive action. Penny Henderson, Ottawa End-of-the world enviros are getting a little tedious.
End-of-the world deniers, such as Rex Murphy, are getting a little tedious.
When’s the Blue Jays’ season opener? Fraser Petrick, Kingston, Ont. The fear-mongering about global warming and the disastrous effects it will have on life on earth never stops.
I gave up believing end-ofthe-world predictions when the Club of Rome predicted in 1972 that within a few decades the world would run out of oil, gas, silver, tin, zinc and many other minerals. Instead, except for tin, we have more of these minerals than almost 50 years ago. However, being wrong didn’t dampen the Club of Rome’s enthusiasm for predicting the end of the world.
Like all good (failed) seers, they are never in doubt, but always wrong. Marcis Esmits, Cambridge, Ont. Mother Nature doesn’t know climate change deniers or evangelists.
It is red in tooth and claw as the fragile environmental balance is upset by heedless dumping of greenhouse gases.
I’ve just finished reading the biography of the late railroad executive Hunter Harrison. He turned a moribund industry on its head and made millions of dollars.
Where is the leader, like Harrison, to call BS on the climate change deniers and to transform our economy to renewable energy with sustainable jobs? Derek Wilson, Port Moody, B.C. Troublesome alarmist philosophers, like Thucydides (460-395 BC), have been around since the begging of time warning of Apocalypse. In Thucydides’ day, it wasn’t climate change, but war. The devastation of the Peloponnesian War so worried Thucydides that he rang out the alarm about future wars. Over 2,000 years later, it culminated in an atomic bomb dropped on a city of millions.
But Rex Murphy tells us that we don’t need to listen to those who stir up “anxiety in the minds of men since ancient times,” because we are still here and mankind has survived. Thucydides has been proven wrong.
Today, it is climate change advocates who are crying wolf. But, as glaciers disappear and hurricanes get more severe, mankind will survive the climate devastation, as we have survived nuclear war. So, how do we get the fanatical “if-we-don’t-actNOW” alarmists to stop annoying Mr. Murphy and his followers? Andrew Toth, Etobicoke, Ont.