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Wishful thinking won't stop global warming

Three hundred km/hr winds! I still can't get over it

Editor, The Times:

Some 20 years ago, when global warming was first being mentioned (more as a possibility than a fact) one of its manifestations would be high winds, storms the likes of which we had never seen before.

Three hundred km/hr winds! In my years as a fisherman and mariner I experienced some pretty heavy duty weather. However, the worst storms were a 'summer breeze' in comparison to what just hit the Philippines.

Even the 'Perfect Storm,' based on that excellent book by Sebastian Junger, was nothing compared to that devastating whirlwind that flattened cities, wiped out whole islands, and caused thousands of deaths in that already impoverished land.

Three hundred km/hr winds! I still can't get over it. There has never in recent times been anything like this.

There is no defence from Mother Nature when it moves against you. All the technological fixes as promised by the likes of the late Julian Symon (adviser to the late Ronald Reagan) are a chimera. An illusion like some holy medal on a chain which one can wave around to ward off evil spirits. One has to hope those evil spirits don't show up.

Yet the climate change deniers are still among us. Worse, they are very powerful and rich people.

People like the Koch brothers, not to mention Gwyn Morgan, who have contributed scads of money to organizations like the Fraser Institute to pick away at the almost non-existent data that proves that climate charge isn't happening.

Try telling that to the people of Philippines or, for that matter, the residents of New York city.

When the winds scream through and the water rises, it's too late.

All the waving of medals to ward off evil prove once more to be worthless.

Dennis Peacock

 

Clearwater, B.C.