Letter to the Editor
This letter was triggered by an article in a daily newspaper. It spoke of problems, especially in Southeast Asia, that supposedly are being caused by "Global Warming." It spoke of weather pattern changes that it claimed were being caused by rising temperatures. The surprise in the article was that they weren't blaming it on mankind. Quite a large number of people believe that we humans are the cause, and yet, they never did say that. They say that this warming is causing the polar ice-caps to melt and the water levels of our oceans to rise. I strongly disagree. I think that weather patterns go through cycles of wet and dry - warming and cooling. I think that this has been going on in varying lengths of cycles since the beginning of time. I think that man, and his "pollution," has little, or nothing to do with it. I think that they are giving man way too much credit for his ability to change nature. We go through cycles of warming, cooling, wet, and dry. Some cycles are longer and some only maybe ten years or so. Our earth was having these swings in temperature and rainfall long before man had industrialized the earth and started putting pollutants into the atmosphere.
To back-up my argument, I have two examples. Ever wonder how Greenland got to be named that? I've read that when the Norsemen first came there, they found an abundance of green vegetation growing there and not ice-covered - thus Greenland. The other is a news clipping that an older gentleman showed me many years ago. It spoke of a summer in the seventeenth century, when the weather in the New England area, remained so cold and wet that they planted their corn very late in the season and temperatures remained so cool that they got such a small crop that none of the corn harvested that year was used for feed. It was all saved for seed for the following year.
Another part of the article spoke of the rise of the ocean, thus causing flooding the worlds coast lands if the ice caps were to melt. I've read that seventy percent of the earth's surface is water. That leaves thirty percent covered by all the land masses. Now, how much of that thirty percent is covered by ice? I admit, under the north polar cap there is almost no land but most of the southern cap is over land. Just how thick would the ice at the poles have to be to raise the water level of that seventy percent water surface to the amount that the alarmist are predicting. I think some predicted that the water level would rise at least twenty inches, causing flood at all the worlds coastlines and low lying areas especially places like Florida and Vietnam.
One thing I don't worry about is global warming. I worry about people who have enough of a voice that can get on the media outlets and scare people. I worry about people who have the power to tax me (and others) just so they can spend the money foolishly and give it to people who pay no taxes and are not willing to work to support themselves. Next time you vote, vote wisely and if you're in Chicago, vote often.
Anthony H. Schumacher
Teutopolis
Teutopolis, Ill. —
