Unfettered Letters

Skeptical about global warming

As our brilliant lawmakers in Washington develop plans to fix our economy and look forward to saving our planet during the upcoming legislative session, our economy continues to worsen. In the future, we will have difficulty competing in the global marketplace due to the religious group that has formed during the last two decades: the environmental movement. When it started in the late 1960s, it was necessary to correct scientifically proven environmental problems with water and air quality and hazardous waste disposal.

As a practicing environmental engineer, I think the conclusion (based on available historical climate data) that man-made activities are causing most of the climate warming that started in the mid 1800s doesn’t pass the smell test.

If the purpose of this religious group is to simply reduce carbon emissions and change our energy sources, just say so. Don’t use the global warming hysteria as a disguise for your ideology.

Bill McAllister
Liberty

Global warming debate

Thank you for the Lisa Benson’s cartoon challenging global warming topic and the two letters begging us to believe it is not nonsense (12/26, Opinion). This provided good balance on the day after a White Christmas when we woke up to no snow left on the ground and temperatures in the 60s — a day that normal highs are supposed to be in the 30s. The letters covered lots of details — including fluctuating extremes, natural disasters, torrential rains, drought, blizzards, record snow, melting ice caps and glaciers, dying coral reefs, warm ocean water and temperature comparisons to the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by humans.

Also it was good to see “The Buzz” (12/26, A-2) report that we may have been hoaxed on the item about the EPA taxing cow flatulence and that no gas tax is foreseen. We need such good economic news.

Yes, there is the Santa Claus season, and just like him, global warming certainly is a fantasy — one we can believe in or not, just like Old Saint Nick.

Frank Grimaldi
Kansas City

Lisa Benson’s cartoon (12/26, Opinion) is a textbook example of misleading political cartooning. She would have readers believe that a warming Earth will no longer have seasons, and will no longer have wind currents that can briefly redistribute cold northern air.

Lisa, increasingly chaotic and violent weather will be one of global warming’s hallmarks. Your children will see, even if you do not.

Val H. Smith
Lawrence

The global warming debate

Our new president likely will be proposing that the U.S. join in a new treaty with the end of Kyoto in 2012.

Before this country damages its plunging economy further, let’s have a serious debate regarding man-made global warming.

The obvious choice for the premise is the Oscar-winning Nobel laureate Al Gore. Since Al states there is overwhelming scientific consensus to support man-made global warming, he could finally slam dunk this whole issue in one or two debates.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds of world-renowned scientists who would love a crack at old Al. I say give them each five minutes and let Mr. Gore knock off these misguided kooks one at a time. He could even make this a pay-per-view so he could at least cover his private jet fuel back to the mansion.

It’s probably just wishful thinking, but let’s keep a fluorescent light in the window, just in case.

Tom Zach
Gladstone

Climate change isn’t ‘nonsense’

Gary Parlier (12/19, Voices) calls global climate change “cyclical nonsense” based on recent record low temperatures

Although the Earth is warming, the effect is a change of the world’s climates — meaning we will have fluctuating extremes in temperature, more natural disasters, torrential rain where there usually is drought and blizzards where it is usually above freezing. It is not simply that every temperature will be warmer at all times. A year of record snow would not refute global climate change, but rather vindicate it.

But hey, it is only our future we are talking about.

Anna O’Connor
Kansas City

The emphasis should be on the “global” in “global warming.” It is not “my backyard” warming, “Independence” warming, or even “United States” warming.

The polar ice caps and glaciers are melting, there is an open-water Northwest Passage in the Arctic in summer, and coral reefs are dying because the ocean water is too warm.

Yes, weather is cyclical, and there may be anomalous years. However, the rise of temperatures over the last century absolutely parallels the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by humans. The scientific community has determined that the evidence is overwhelming.

To hide our heads in the sand is to miss the last opportunity we may have to slow or reverse the trend. There are small things that everyone can do to help. I would prefer to err on the side of the Earth that my grandchildren will inherit.

Linda Casebolt
Lee’s Summit

Kansas climate change study

I found the article about the climate change study by researchers Johannes Feddema and Nathan Brunsell and its effect on Kansas interesting (11/13, Local, “Climate change brings Kansans dire prediction”). But I questioned the time frame they used, 1950-2000.

Why didn’t they go back to the 1930s, when parts of Kansas, Nebraska and that whole area were referred to as the dust bowl? We might learn from those people — how they coped and what they did to improve the situation.

Seems to me we ought to use as much of history as possible.

David Napoli
Kansas City

I was struck by the two contrasting articles about Kansas in the Local section on 11/13: “Climate change brings Kansans dire prediction” and “Idea to lower Kansas highway speed limit appears to run out of gas”.

Are Kansans resigned to the fact that no one wants to be inconvenienced by reducing our carbon footprint and therefore want to retain the higher speed limit so folks can get through our future, devastated state as soon as possible?

Mike Burlingame
Overland Park

Give green jobs a green light

Why not kill two birds with one stone?

As our nation’s pocketbook gets smaller and the climate crisis gets worse, it is high time that our leaders make a serious effort, and fast, to invest in creating green jobs throughout the nation.

This is one solution that could help both of the biggest issues that this country, and the world, are facing. Congress needs to use its common sense and support legislation for green jobs — now.

We wouldn’t actually be killing any birds but saving them.

Sylvia Niccum
Lawrence

Green jobs mean green money

Obviously, many people are basing their vote on Barack Obama and John McCain’s ideas for our economy. What baffles me is we have solutions to not only this problem, but the biggest issue facing our world: global warming.

Global warming is happening in everyone’s backyard, and our leaders could be doing something to not only stop it, but to stop the economic crisis also.

According to a report recently released by the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, in Kansas alone we have the potential to create more than 19,000 jobs in two years and more than 2 million jobs nationwide. If I were a presidential candidate, people couldn’t stop me from talking about green-collar jobs.

If we are going to eliminate both the moral and monetary debt we are handing our children, our current and future leadership must match the dedication that individual citizens are already committed to making.

Lily Siebert
Lawrence

Maximize Kansas’ wind power

To some, humans may be considered the most selfish mammals on Earth. While the polar bears of Alaska fight to stay alive, most Americans are consuming, consuming, consuming. Due to global warming (although others disagree — cough, Gov. Palin, cough) polar bears are a threatened species.

What the public needs to realize is that there are options for creating clean energy. Southwest Kansas has such a huge potential to produce wind energy. Because wind expansion is lead by individual developers, we need to elect leaders that will support them.

Not only is wind energy growing, but it provides many job opportunities. It’s sad to see Kansas, such a windy state, lagging behind in these developments.

Bridget Lavaveshkul
Lawrence

All global warming man-made?

This letter is for those who cheered when Joe Biden scoffed and practically ridiculed Sarah Palin regarding her answer to the global warming question in last week’s debate. When asked her opinion about global warming, Palin’s response was that part of the problem has to do with man-made activity but also that cyclical temperature changes contribute to global warming. Palin went on to offer some very constructive solutions to the problem.

Biden’s response was that the global warming problem is “man-made … clearly man-made,” implying that man-made activities are the only causes for global warming. Then he went on to say that if you do not know the cause it is virtually impossible to know the solution.

For those who agree that man is the one and only cause of global warming, I have a rather simple question for you. Based on the fact that a large portion of North America was once covered by glaciers that are no longer here, where did the glaciers go and how did they disappear, since you have neither man nor hydrocarbons to blame for their disappearance?

Paul D. Hokanson
Odessa, Mo.

Arctic sea ice melting?

I wondered how those journalists who are committed to the view that human activity causes global warming would present the effects of a cold winter and a cool spring and summer on the environment.

Well now I know. They present the facts but precede them with a misleading headline and leading paragraph.

In The Star (9/17, A-3) we are told that the residual summer ice this year in the Arctic Ocean was 1.74 million square miles, as opposed to 1.59 million in 2007 — an almost 9 percent increase. Yet the title given for this was “Arctic sea ice keeps on melting.”

I suppose that this is technically correct. Arctic sea ice melts every summer. But it implies a continually worsening situation, which is not the conclusion that most people would draw from the facts as stated.

Robert Reimers
Gardner