MY TURN: Climate change: Important facts missing

Earth breaks yearly heat record … (Jan. 11, page C7). This article is missing many important facts because it is designed to scare an uninformed public. For example, ("Earth had its hottest year ever in 2024 …"). False. Our record keeping does not go back more than 200 years, which is about .000006% of the age of our planet. This small sample has no meaning in the larger picture. (Try making an accurate weather forecast by looking out the window for 1/2 a second each day.) The geological record is much longer, reaching back billions of years. It shows much larger planetary variations. It was about 30 degrees warmer during the age of the dinosaurs. Earth has been cooling for the last 80 million years. There were several ice-free periods and some Iceball Earth episodes (google Iceball Earth).

Thirty million years ago, the planet was 10 or more degrees above present values, and mangoes and bananas grew wild in Oregon. About 3 million years ago, volcanoes closed the Central American peninsulas, and separated the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This drastic change in ocean currents allowed our world to fall into a pattern of cyclical ice ages, some of which covered the United States in ice; 1 mile deep in New York. With billions of people now living on our planet, maybe some planetary warming would be a good thing; It would certainly make feeding everyone at least more possible. Satellite imaging suggests that our planet is starting to undergo a "greening."

The article talks about the supposedly damaging effects we are already experiencing. While it is true that the dollar amount of various weather-related events has drastically increased, it is also true that we have built far more infrastructure in hazard-prone areas. NOAA, on its website, reports that there has been no statistically significant increase in either storm frequency or intensity in the last 100 years. During this same period, there has been a 90% drop in weather-related deaths despite a huge increase in population.

For those fearing we are damaging our planet, do not worry; the human-caused climate changes are far smaller than those caused by nature. The geologic record always shows that life flourishes in warm eras, and dies off during cold times. Humans have proved to be the most adaptable species on the planet, thriving in both arctic and hot areas even before we became a technological species. The 1.5 degree "danger level" has no support by science, it is just an admission that our climate models do not work well for larger changes. Nature routinely exceeds this value, and life thrives when the temperature rises. In fact, the family of primates that led to us began to evolve in one of the hottest areas of our planet.

None of this implies that we should just forget about climate change. It is real, and it operates on geological time scales. We should reduce emissions where it makes economic sense. For example, use oil and gas to phase out coal. Build more nuclear plants. Develop mitigation measures in case the sea level rises. Solar and wind and battery power are not yet ready for widespread deployment, as witnessed by the fact that they require large subsidies and these technologies are rapidly improving. Panic spending on soon-to-be-obsolete technology will just leave us impoverished when most need help. 

More information can be found in "Cool It" by Bjorn Lomborgorg, and in "Hot Talk, Cold Science," by S. Fred Singer.

Those who want to treat climate change as an emergency and an "existential threat" are simply trying to stampede us into surrendering our liberty to a grasping and dictatorial central government.

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Barry McElmurry is a Coeur d'Alene resident.