'Natural' causes not to blame for climate change

One of the arguments used by people who fear the implications of human choices as the cause of climate change - including in recent letters printed by this paper - is that carbon dioxide is natural and essential to life on this planet. As with every instance of cherry-picked data, such statements are true only under very limited conditions.

The natural earth, whether a product of Creation, evolution or some combination of the two, is full of chemicals that are natural and essential "e.g., water, cobalt (in vitamin B12), sodium chloride (table salt), hormones, sugars, fats, copper, etc. Yet each is beneficial only within a specific range of quantity or proportion (i.e., dose) over a certain time (rate) and exposure route.

Some effects even vary with phase and temperature. Water inhaled as a vapor at normal temperatures, for instance, is essential to our well-being, whereas inhaling water as hot steam or as liquid could be fatal.

Further, what is beneficial to one life-form may be lethal to another. Indeed, the effects of many chemicals vary with the stage of development when exposed.

Life on this planet exists only in balance with other chemical and geological processes that have their own sensitivities to different chemicals, including carbon dioxide.

Finally, there is absolutely nothing "natural" about the carbon dioxide waste produced by burning fossil fuels that had been buried deep within the earth and that require ever-more extreme methods for their access and extraction.

There is nothing "natural" about the billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide dumped each year into the very thin layer of the atmosphere that is intimately connected to the chemistry and geology upon which life as we know it depends.

The natural substance argument provides no refuge to those avoiding the reality of human causation of climate change!

Julie Nowak

Grayslake