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Letters: Guess what, ‘CO2 isn’t that big a deal’

Michael Sather states that “the vast majority of peer-reviewed climate scientists have concluded that our climate is warming ...

Editor, The News:

Re: Climate change not a guess (Letters, Nov. 19).

Michael Sather states that “the vast majority of peer-reviewed climate scientists have concluded that our climate is warming ... as a result of a greater concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.”

However, numerous scientists have published about this issue and have concluded that CO2 does not exert a controlling force on climate change.

This can be confirmed by checking information available from the Heartland Institute (heartland.org) and the Cornwall Alliance (cornwallalliance.org).

The Cornwall Alliance published a list of over 20,000 scientists who oppose the conclusions that CO2 is causing runaway global warming due to man’s burning of fossil fuels.

Many of these scientists were part of the U.N.’s early efforts to understand the cause of rising temperatures, which occurred from 1978-1998. But their involvement and conclusions were expunged from the U.N.’s agenda.

The so-called “anthropogenic global warming crisis,” hyped by James Hansen in 1986, has passed since this warming period has ended, but the desire to tax carbon dioxide emissions has not ended, as it should have.

In fact, looking at climate station data shows that since 1880 we have seen three warming periods, followed by stable or declining temperatures since the end of the very cold period from 1650-1840, called the “Little Ice Age.”

Also, of direct relevance to this debate is the fact that the warming period from 1921-1941 was warmer than the more recent warming period, from 1978-1998.

Recent research by Dr. Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist, has identified what actually controls our climate on earth (something I have thought about as an ecological scientist for over 45 years of my own research).

Dr. Svensmark has shown that forces far beyond our control are at work to cause the fluctuations we see in climate (read his book to get the details: The Chilling Stars, second edition, 2008).

Dr. Svensmark’s conclusions have been supported by two studies from the world’s leading physics lab – the C.E.R.N. labs in Switzerland/France.

I have worked on real air pollution issues in Canada for over 40 years and I can assure you that CO2 is not a compound of any concern to air pollution scientists or the majority of climatological scientists and, therefore, also not an issue of concern to the general public.

It’s interesting to note that any greenhouse operator can tell you that the current CO2 concentration in the air is too low to maximize growth; they must inject CO2 to reach 1,000-1,200 ppmv to maximize plant growth.

The periods on earth when CO2 concentrations were five to 10 times what they are now were periods when luxuriant plant growth was found on the earth’s surface.

Dennis Jaques, M.Sc., Pres.

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