One of the functions of a newspaper is to be a forum for the exchange of viewpoints, with letters to the editor one of the most common ways of doing that. It’s important that a newspaper provides space for discussion on topics of interest to readers.
For several months, The B.C. Catholic has provided space for readers to share their arguments about climate change, how serious an issue it is, and how we should respond as citizens and as Catholics. Opinions have prompted other opinions, and at times, the Editor has had to step in and condense letters in a way that wasn’t always appreciated, or successful.
We are publishing the following selection of letters that were previously submitted, with a reminder to writers that they should keep their contributions brief (250 words is recommended) and as engaging and relevant for other readers as possible, avoiding dense citations of data and statistics that often lead to more of the same. This applies to all topics, not only climate change.
These letters have been edited. — Editor
In a Jan. 1 letter, a writer posed a few questions, which are not difficult to answer:
Q. How does the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization founded in 1988 have the data to compare pre-industrial levels, where neither the instrumentation nor planetary measurements were available?
A. Scientists can use modelling techniques to provide an accurate record of temperatures even before official records begin. For instance, natural archives such as ice, rocks, and fossils can be used. The fact that the IPCC was founded in 1988 is irrelevant; that is simply the governing body that publishes the scientists’ papers.
Q. What do they mean by unsustainable energy and land use?
A. This means the use of energy or land resources that will cause them to run out and not be naturally replenished. One example of unsustainable land use is poor farming methods that put so much pressure on farmland that it can only yield harvests for a finite number of years due to overuse of fertilizers. There are sustainable ways to use energy and land. Solar, wind, and hydroelectric power are more sustainable because they do not deplete the sun, wind, or water. Similarly, there are sustainable ways to farm.
Q. What if the 1.1oC supposed warming allows the world to grow more food in places like Canada?
A. The idea that Canada will be able to farm more due to higher temperatures is misinformed. It is true that there is a lot of land in the Canadian north that is currently unsuited to farming, but agriculture depends on a lot more factors than simply higher temperatures. In any case, if it were a solution, it would be a short-lived one due to the ever-increasing temperatures. Furthermore, it would also be a very selfish attitude on the part of Canada, while the rest of the world to the south turns to desert. What has been observed is that permafrost is melting, creating new lakes that emit further greenhouse gases, which is an example of a positive feedback loop.
Q. Why is Pope Francis’ exhortation aimed at drawing attention to climate change seen as an imperative ethical, spiritual, and social challenge of stewardship when there are so many more pressing ethical, spiritual, and social challenges in the world today?
A. The fact that the Pope is so outspoken on this issue and preaches to the whole world about it, not just Catholics, should make us sit up and listen. It must, therefore, be an issue concerning ethics, morality, and social issues. Pope Francis makes it quite clear that our failure to care for our common home constitutes a sin. “For human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins. To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.” (LS8) “Climate change makes manifest a tragic and striking example of structural sin.” (LD3) If we as Catholics are not caring for creation as we should, then this is a matter for the confessional. I would also argue that climate change is the most critical issue of justice in our world today. Thousands of people die each year as a result of climate change effects, such as heat exhaustion, water shortages, vector-borne diseases, and famine. Millions more have had their lives uprooted due to the loss of farmland to climate-related issues, such as sea rise and desertification. Climate change is likely to cause civil unrest and wars, due to a lack of resources, ever more frequent freak weather events, and economic decline. Fighting over access to fresh water is already happening on the border between India and Pakistan. Climate change affects everyone, from the unborn to the elderly, rich and poor alike, though first the poor.
However, what really makes this the most critical issue is that all other social issues can be reversed due to some kind of human interaction or will, whereas climate change detrimentally affects the habitat of the human race. Even if everyone tomorrow stopped all further damage to the environment, we’re already at the point of no return for many issues. Several effects, such as global ocean temperature and the decrease in continental ice sheets, are already irreversible, and positive feedback loops have kicked in that are causing the earth to continually become hotter and hotter. We’re destroying what we as a species need to survive. Our basic human needs for freshwater, farmland, and shelter are at risk. This is why we need to address this issue as a matter of urgency before it’s too late.
Q. Is paying carbon taxes the only charitable and stewardship way to look after the planet?
A. No, the carbon tax is not the only proposed solution, and its effectiveness is questionable. If anyone reading this denies that climate change is happening, I would urge you to read the IPCC’s Assessment reports or go to any government website in Canada to look up the correct information. Our country’s economy will go into decline due to climate change. As damage to property becomes more common, our insurance premiums will rise. Clinging to luxury lifestyles like driving a car for every trip is not justifiable while climate refugees across the globe migrate to find a new home.
Mark Norbury CGeog (GIS)
Port Moody
The term “denier” is rather tattered, worn, and of diminishing impact as more and more scientists embrace the label jokingly.
I have not heard any ex-cathedra declaration from the Pope on this matter. Indeed, in the Catholic Encyclopedia, we read: “The mathematical and experimental sciences, also known as exact sciences, have no contact whatever with faith, although at one time, it was erroneously believed that the geocentric system was contained in the Bible.”
Did Galileo go to hell because he challenged the belief that the solar system is geocentric? I think not. Core science is not a matter of faith; that 2 + 2 = 4 is not an article of faith; that the carbon atom has six protons, six electrons, and six neutrons is not an article of faith.
Despite the demeaning of the subject by politicization, money-grabbing, and virtue signalling of amateurs, the core of climate science is indeed a science and will eventually, perhaps not in our lifetimes, be settled by scientists.
Unfortunately, there is so much money to be made these days from climate alarmism by media, by research chairs and faculty positions, and in massive research grants, not to mention political gain from one more divisive issue, that it requires commitment and effort to discover what the real truth is on any particular issue.
First, the big picture. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), supposedly the ultimate authority on such matters, in the absence of climate change, the average person globally will be 4.5 times richer by 2100 than today, while the consequence of doing nothing about climate change will be that the average person will only be 4.3 times richer. That is hardly anything worth getting fussed about.
As far as there being “too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere” is concerned, viewed over millions of years, carbon dioxide is now close to an all-time low. Carbon dioxide reached a concentration of 7,000 parts per million in the past compared to the current approximately 400 parts per million. The earth did not incinerate itself at that level. In fact, plant life flourished.
As far as “droughts and rising sea levels” are concerned, public attention is always drawn by media to the latest “extreme” weather event with little attention paid to what IPCC reports actually say. It is a well-kept secret that according to reports in IPCC AR6, a signal of climate change has NOT YET EMERGED BEYOND NATURAL VARIABILITY for a whole list of weather events, from river floods, heavy precipitation, and landslides, to droughts, severe wind storms, heavy snowfall and ice storms, and marine heatwaves.
Moreover, these forecasts are with respect to the IPCC’s most extreme and unrealistic scenario, called RCP8.5, in a family of scenarios. There would be even less “confidence” under the other more probable scenarios. That is why Professor Jim Shea, Chair of the UN IPCC, stated, “There is NO existential threat to humanity if global temperatures increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
Alarmists promote the idea that the poorest in the world, such as in Africa, will suffer the most from global warming and more carbon dioxide. Yet the earth is measurably greener, particularly on the southern borders of the Sahara desert, and crops are measurably greater.
The latest insane proposal by global warming alarmists is the reduction in the use of fertilizers. Who is going to go hungry because of that? Not the jet-setting party-goers heading for the latest COP meeting. It will be mainly the poor in Africa and Asia.
What third-world countries want is cheap energy to develop their industries. Poor countries can’t afford green energy and clean environments.
Where are the calculations of the benefits and disadvantages of a combination of increased carbon dioxide and a few degrees of warming. The only such analysis that I am aware of is that conducted by Bjørn Lomborg and his colleagues at the Copenhagen Consensus Center. His book “The Skeptical Environmentalist” contains a very readable discussion.
Global warming alarmists promoted the myth that the human race, or at least a major part of it, would be extinct by 2030. There was news coverage of children crying in school because they were convinced that they would not live long enough to be teenagers. Targeting children as a way of exerting pressure on parents was (and is) an established practice.
It should be recognized that alarmists are in control of most mainstream media, which shape public opinion. Politicians compete for votes based on public opinion polls. So it is no surprise that all major parties in Canada and elsewhere talk the talk of alarmism.
The support of global governments for the targets of the COP meetings is something of a charade. Two of the largest “polluters,” China and Russia, don’t give a fig for the ramblings of the COP jamborees. China, for one, is building coal-fired power stations as fast as it can.
Finally, a September 2023 report from Statistics Norway states that historically, “there have been large climatic variations. Temperature reconstructions indicate that there is a ‘warming’ trend that seems to have been going on for as long as approximately 400 years. Prior to the last 250 years or so, such a trend could only be due to natural causes.”
In other words, “the results imply that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations.” The report says, “with the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.”
If we are determined to take action and spend several trillion dollars, which seems to be the case politically, we should at least be diligent about choosing the best possible courses of action, and that requires challenging the orthodoxy and being careful to scrutinize all proposals. The current lemming-like rush to green energy will do more damage to world economies and impose more hardships on the poor than just adapting to global warming.”
Norman Reilly
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
Simon Fraser University
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