CLIMATE: Rough forecast ahead

On June 19, Joe Gerards wrote a My Turn column on Global Warming (AGW). I do agree with him on one point; that evidence, proof and facts should be the sole determiner of whether AGW exists and if so what to do about it. Unfortunately, he produces none of these. Let’s look at the facts and see whether, to quote Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s title, the Merchants of Doubt are putting out lies, disinformation and obscuration.

Gerards attempts to claim that carbon output is the basis of climate change theory. He apparently isn’t aware that carbon dioxide isn’t the only carbon compound that can affect the AGW process. Methane is 24 times as powerful at trapping heat as CO2. According to an article published in the journal Nature, the effects of the warming permafrost and Arctic Ocean could cause costs equal to the entire production of Earth for an entire year and that it could take as long as a decade to clear the atmosphere of the methane. That’s a best case scenario; at worst we will have a methane release equivalent to the extinction event of 255 million years ago and wipe out 95 percent of ocean dwelling species and 70 percent of land species. There are 10,000 billion tons of methane frozen up there.

Then Gerards wanders off-topic and starts talking about the ACA. I fail to see how medical care relates to Global Warming. Perhaps he’s thinking of the World Meteorological Organization’s report that more people died of heat related conditions in the decade from 2000 to 2010 than any decade since records have been kept.

He says that Cliff Harris claims that we’ll be back to severe winters by 2020 and that’s good enough for Gerards. I wonder though, Dr. Steven W. Running, Regent’s Professor at the University of Montana says that, no matter what, the next 50 years are going to be extremely rough. In his words, “the path we’re on is unsustainable.”

JEFF BOURGET

Coeur d’Alene