Is the sky falling?

Prof. Richard Schwartz (Letters, March 4) blames climate change for the floods in Iran and Zimbabwe and says that Israel’s coastal plain will soon be inundated by the Mediterranean Sea.

Schwartz joins the long list of Doomsday predictors who blame every disaster on climate change. He seems to have forgotten the 40-day Genesis flood and all the other floods and droughts since then.

Al Gore in 2006 warned that we had only 10 years left to combat climate change. In a 1989 AP article, a senior UN environmental doomsday expert said that entire nations would be eradicated by rising water levels if global warming wasn’t reversed by 2000.

Schwartz’s solution is that we all turn to vegetarianism since the livestock sector produces more methane than all the means of transportation combined. This is about as practical or likely as also outlawing all means of transportation and returning to donkeys and the like, although increase in eating veggies will have health benefits for some.

In the meantime, the Kinneret has risen about three meters from this winter’s rains, yet Hayarkon St. is not flooded and the famous TA beach has not receded. In Holland, where about 20% of the country lies below sea level, the average sea level has risen only two centimeters in the past 10 years – not two meters.

More than 30 years after Al Gore’s “sky is falling” prediction, everything seems to be largely intact.

PROF. EMERITUS YIGAL HOROWITZ

Beersheba