Dear Editor:
I too would like to wrap up these exchanges about climate change, but in his last letter, Steve Gabell asks Mr. Van Dam and myself a question, “what if you’re wrong?” He then goes on to paint an impossibly utopian picture of what we’ll have if we do everything the climate alarmists demand of us, followed by a dystopian image of a world continuing to use fossil fuels, once again admitting no reasonable middle ground. Moreover, his utopian canvas and dystopian brush go well beyond any likely effects of carbon dioxide in the air, to include: clean water, children’s health, liveable cities, energy cost, warfare, and in true alarmist form, our civilization itself.
I could delve into each of the aspects Mr. Gabell raises, but since he provided no details for them, and as he has not addressed most of my previous points, then in the spirit of wrapping up, I will not do that. Neither will I respond to his naive assertions about energy, sustainability, green jobs, renewables, the supposed consensus, and so on. We have clearly reached the point of talking past each other, to no one’s further benefit.
I’ll just end by reiterating that it is simplistic to reduce all environmental concerns to “climate change”, and then base all solutions on the ending of fossil fuel usage. The “existential crisis” Mr. Gabell and like-minded alarmists believe in is based on long-term projections by flawed climate models which exaggerate the effects of CO2. There are more urgent and worrisome problems in our world today, and reducing CO2 in the air, even if it were technologically and politically feasible, would not stop the climate from changing.
Ed Norman, Kemptville
