Re: Science loses ground to superstition, Oct 2.
It’s interesting to watch how right-leaning journalists like Mr. Fletcher try to purposely misinform readers by cherry-picking information from the IPCC’s recent climate report to suit their personal agendas.
The trick is to focus on a small period of time using a record-breaking base year (1998) for comparison; they also fail to mention the coinciding ocean temperature increases. That way, they can be dismissive about the scientific findings — which by the way are now at 95 per cent confidence that our actions are significantly influencing global warming. Put another way, that there’s five per cent confidence we’re not.
So take a moment and read the climate report yourself, so you can interpret the real findings, which are based on a culmination of peer-reviewed, independent papers by hundreds of scientists.
What I found is that global surface and ocean temperatures have notably increased, snow and ice is diminishing, sea levels are rising and greenhouse gases are increasing and are now at an all-time high. They also note, “human influence is clear.”
And what is the predicted future? More severe weather events, like superstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and related flooding, permafrost melt, landslides and coastal storm surges.
This last year the cost for Superstorm Sandy, Calgary, Midwestern fires and droughts in North America exceeded $100 billion. Meanwhile, the U.N. reports direct losses from such disasters worldwide have been $2.5 trillion since 2000 — a cost that the impacted countries underestimated by at least 50 per cent.
There are high costs to an instable climate, scientists are directly tying instable climate with the burning of fossil fuels. Do we really want to play bafflegab with words any longer, or shall we finally take action?
Deborah Rasnick
Brentwood Bay