Another Idiot Letter to the Editor and My Reply

These people have no common sense, they are driven by a left wing agenda that is full of outright lies, and they have no intention of stopping until we agree with them 100%.

Common sense has place in the debate over climate change


I propose a simple new argument for man's contribution to global warming that James Barrante, PhD, claims has not yet been proved by science (May 8 letter, "Before offering thoughts on climate, use scientific method").

Over the last 125 years, we've released enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gasoline, the latter derived from oil. Coal and oil lay sequestered in the earth for hundreds of millions of years. Common sense alone, without scientific proof, must tell us we can't dump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in a relative instant of geologic time without measurable consequences to the earth's ecological balance.

Dr. Barrante claims human activities have nothing to do with the natural cycling of the earth's atmospheric temperature. He asks that we cite one personal example we can claim is convincing evidence of man's contribution to global warming. This surprises me. As a scientist, he knows one example is highly subjective and statistically insignificant.

While Pascal's wager may be naive with respect to religion, it is valid for the argument that we must bet on the side of the majority of scientists. We have nothing to lose if they're wrong, but we have everything to lose if they are correct and we ignore them.

Winston Churchill said, "True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information."

Jack Lander

Southbury

U.S. society has much to lose if warmists get power they seek


In reference to Jack Lander's May 10 letter, "Common sense has place in the debate over climate change," I agree we have released enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the last 125 years, but is it still there — or could it have been absorbed by the oceans and is now sitting on the ocean floor in the shells of small marine animals? Maybe it was absorbed by the rain forests, resulting in much more lush growth, which in turn absorbs even more carbon dioxide. The earth has been shown over geologic time to be extremely resilient.

The shrine of global-warming activists is the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. Over the past couple of years, researchers there have shown they are quite capable of fudging or ignoring facts that doesn't match their agenda. These are the scientists we are supposed to believe? Most scientists 600 years ago thought the world was flat. We all know how that turned out.

Mr. Lander says, "We have nothing to lose if they are wrong." Suppose the climate-change activists got everything they wanted. Energy costs would skyrocket because no fossil fuels could be used to generate electricity. Transportation and power usage, generated only by wind and solar, would be extremely limited. How would the electricity be generated to charge all those electric cars? Some bureaucrat in Washington, or worse, at the United Nations, would tell you how you could heat your home. A central government planning center would decide the setting of your thermostat, the car you drive and the type of light bulbs you could use (if you have any power). It would ban ice makers in refrigerators, the eating of meat because cow flatulence gives off climate-changing methane, and gasoline-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers and snow blowers.

Other than losing most of our freedoms and our standard of living, and being totally controlled from a central tyrannical government, I suppose "we have nothing to lose."

When I see scientific proof global warming is human-caused and will result in disaster, I'll be first in line to help do something about it. Until then, keep up the research and leave me alone!

Jon Quint

Woodbury