Saturday, July 26, 2008

CLIMATE CHANGE

An Open Letter to my Cousins in the West and Readers in General:

I think you are probably taking the overwhelming amount of anti-climate change material on the windbag site as what I believe.

I believe when you tell me, that you and Barrie see differences in the fish species. I believe that we are in a general warming trend although not as great as thousands of years ago.

My site is an attempt to bring out the other side of the issues which do not except for the National Post, get a fair hearing. For example, to call someone a "climate change denier" is like calling someone Ernst Zundel [the Canadian who denies the holocaust]. What I see is OVER-emphasis on man's ability to change the temperatures. I don't deny what the temperatures are, just the cause.

We may have a small part to play, but when you look at how nature changes temperatures so quickly and easily with volcanoes and islands being born in the sea and so on, I question how puny man can even compete.

And the only reason I do question man's influence is because noted and well-known climatologists etc. have questioned man's influence and given convincing reasons as to their opinion. Unfortunately we are on such a temperature-rising bandwagon, they are dismissed or overlooked, not listened to in the crowd of yelling panic-mongers.

So I am simply attempting in my small way, to air the other side.
I have heard examples like how many glasses of water would you have to pour into the Pacific Ocean to raise the level 1 mm? That is what the many experts point out about temperature.

It never hurts to do everything we can for our environment. Back in 1970 when I took Biology, I read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", a classic on how pesticides etc. were soon going to kill off all birds and there would be silent springs from then on.

I read The Population Bomb (1968), a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich about overpopulation which claimed by the year 2000 [which was about 30 years away at the time], the earth would have so many people that there would be massive famines the likes of which we have never seen and people dying in masses due to too many people living in a crowded world.

Well the alarmists such as the two above, made us think, and we stopped a lot of pollution going into our lakes and rivers so that the Lake Ontario salmon once again is present in ever-increasing numbers. Lake Erie has seen a return of trout and bass.

So the alarmists serve a purpose, just like the alarmists regarding the year 2000. They make us take notice and change things and examine program code and re-write it. Some good things happen. Then we look and say it was all a big sham, "Look nothing happened! 2000 came and went!" True but it was partly because the alarmists made people take a closer look which prevented the problems.

However if you look at the predictions of the alarmists they are invariably wrong. We still have birds and no silent springs. We have even more population than the population-warners estimated and actually food is more evenly distributed and the poor are getting richer around the world. Oh it is never fast enough. But the dire warnings of calamity have come and gone like a horror movie.

So it is always good to listen and work at making things better, right?
But to shake up our society with drastic measures and carbon taxes and create even greater burdens on the poor and middle class is NOT an idea I agree with.

Have I made myself clearer?

Anyway Lorrie, as your father-in-law rightly observed, "everyone is entitled to their own ridiculous opinion" is a good policy.

So I wish you well with your "spring" and "mud" investments. Is someone who really gets into the white mud stuff called a "mudder"? [as opposed to a fadder?] Sorry Lorrie, just couldn't resist that one.

I really enjoy keeping in contact from time to time. It is sad to me on my side of the Wallingford's that they are all so scattered and living lives with no relationship with their own family tree. And of course the next generation won't even know the family tree at all. That is sad. However as the TV show, a few years back "Life Goes On".

And now an attempt at an early morning Irish Ontario prayer for the fishermen of the west.

May the ocean rise up to meet you
But not too high,

May the fish jump into your boat
before the hooks and nets are ready

May the sun always be at your back
but only when sailing north
at mid day

And may God bless you
with his greatest blessings.

Always.

Charles