Editor, The Times:
In my day when the snow disappeared and ice melted it was a sign that things were warming up.
When ice shelves break off in both the Arctic and Antarctica one can assume that there has been some form of heating up.
Add to that, the Northwest Passage, for which John Franklin and many others died and which Stan Rogers sang about, is ice-free for the summer months nowadays.
Franklin could have sailed the Terror and Erebus through to the Pacific and back again and home to that then center of the universe jolly old England - nothing to it.
However, these days things have obviously been turned upside down. We are in for a new Ice Age, some tell us. Now, of course, this could happen somewhere down the line.
But for now, as the Pacific waves lap further up the beaches of Tuvalu and other Pacific islands and glaciers melt away into swollen rivers from the Alps to the Himalayas, the weight of evidence is on the side of global warming. Al Gore might be a bore and not a good husband (just ask Tipper), but he appears to be closer to the facts than those who would deny the general warm-up of planet earth.
Now admittedly the cause is harder to pinpoint. It well could be that part of the general warm-up is cyclical.
Nothing much we can do there.
However, we do know from past evidence that filling the atmosphere with tons of particulate will have an effect on climate. True, it could go either way - heating up or a new Ice Age - but both would be equally disastrous!
So eat, drink and be merry, you old executive business types.
When the ocean starts lapping at your toes don't say we didn't tell you.
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.