Red herring distracts from climate change

Definition of red herring: “from the practice of drawing a red herring across a trail to confuse hunting dogs: something that distracts attention from the real issue.”

The Emmy for best local use of a red herring goes to our climate change denial weatherman blogger for using an improbable letter (about a “30 foot sea level rise in the next 15 years”) to the editor of a small town newspaper to represent the entire scholarly view of the global warming scientific community, followed by a ridiculous statement that was made by a U.N. non-climate scientist (Noel Brown) 32 years ago (about entire nations being wiped off the face of the earth in an 11 year time frame), followed by a third U.N. statement, apparently made in 2005 (16 years ago) predicting “50 million environmental refugees” by the end of the decade.

The actual real issue(s):

Over the past 100 years, global temperatures have risen about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), with sea level response to that warming totaling about 6 to 8 inches (with about half of that amount occurring since 1993).

These populous coastal regions throughout the world are located in low-lying areas particularly vulnerable to sea level rise: Bangladesh, Maldives, Louisiana, Venice, Manhattan, London, Shanghai, Hamburg, Bangkok, Jakarta, Mumbai, Manila and Buenos Aires.

Extreme drought can also create climate refugees inland: Gobi Desert in China, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Other extreme weather events contributing to climate refugees: cataclysmic fires, snowstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes and typhoons. — Mark S. Gailey, Chico