Dear Editor:
RE: Critical thinking, Aug. 25.
John Burger defends the Editor’s Note that was added to Jane Vandervliet’s letter in which she challenges the oft-repeated claim that there is a “climate emergency”, by claiming that Vandervliet’s letter contains false statements about climate change, without stating what was false about them.
Why is it false to state what many climate scientists and other experts are saying?
While it may be true, as the editor and Burger note, that the majority of climate scientists (who might be afraid of losing their government funding if they challenge the politically correct view), say that the relatively small increase in temperature over the last century is reason for concern, it doesn’t follow that they also believe that we have a “climate emergency” that requires us to take immediate extreme measures to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.
Who can say for certain what the ideal temperature of the Earth should be, or what portion of the temperature increase was caused by using fossil fuels compared to natural weather and climate variability?
The planet has been warming for more than a century. So far, the world has done a decent job at adapting to this change. Crop yields have doubled or even quadrupled since 1960. Over the past century, the number of deaths per million people from weather and climate catastrophes has dropped by 97%.
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts, and similar natural disasters or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2 mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly, as Europeans are discovering.
Henry Brunsveld,
Puslinch