Editor, The Times
The Power of the Press
Re the June 13 editorial, “Climate Change Sceptics Need to Provide an Alternative Explanation”.
Keith, let me provide an alternative explanation. Last year in my June 12 letter to the editor I wrote, “If you had taken the time to read my letter, you would have noticed that I am just as much in favour of cleaning up the environment as anyone else” and “Global warming started before man got up on his hind legs and dragged his knuckles through the snowdrifts”. Apparently you didn’t get the drift! I was referring to the days of cavemen when the earth’s glaciers started to melt. Just because I don’t agree with your “science fiction” authors doesn’t make me a global warming denier.
Apparently you didn’t like my humour regarding the slate tablets being signed by Al Gore and David Suzuki. Maybe you can enlighten me as to how they came up with these figures: 96 per cent of all marine species and 70 per cent of all land species became extinct during the Permian-Triassic event 250 million years ago.
I must say I was very impressed with the fact that your editorial mentioned the name Lamberton way more than Gore, Suzuki, Dyer, or Lovelock. You mentioned humour has its place but should not be used as a substitute for a valid argument. Sarcasm and ridicule are also not valid arguments. I agree. I find no humour in being called a global warming denier. You can decide whether it falls under the category of sarcasm or ridicule. It doesn’t matter to me because I never get mad. I get even!
The good news is there are lots of ideas we agree on:
1) Global warming is happening. We don’t agree on the main reasons why.
2) Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and the amount in our atmosphere has been constantly rising since the start of the industrial revolution. I say it started rising earlier than that, but nobody was paying attention because it really didn’t matter.
Just for the record, what was the world’s population at the beginning of the industrial revolution? The difference between then and now is a lot of carbon dioxide. I think if we could control breathing so humans exhaled every 30 seconds instead of every 10, we could reduce human carbon dioxide emissions by 200 per cent!
And now for the bad news! Your two examples of global warming:
1) Leaving kids in a car on a hot sunny day. Not accurate! Global warming involves the heating of the earth’s surface. The interior of a car would be equivalent to the earth’s core.
2) (Last but not least) If the temperature in your bed was just right with two blankets and you now have three, why do you believe you are not getting warmer? This is not global warming; this is called aging!
Remember when we were younger and testosterone ran rampant, when saying hello to a lady was a form of foreplay? Heck, one sheet on the bed was ample, not two or three. Now we’re older, muscles and joints are stiff and sore. Putting your socks on in the morning is almost a chore. According to Dr. Bob’s diagnosis, it originally was called “arousal”. Now, it’s called “arthritis”!
Jim Lamberton
The Rambling Man