Evidence supports climate change
Randy Rossi’s Nov. 3 letter about climate is half right and half wrong.
What he got right is that the world’s temperature has risen and fallen over millions of years due to natural causes. What’s wrong is his claim that what is happening now is natural: it’s not.
What is the evidence? First, natural changes have always before taken place slowly, over thousands of years or longer. They never rose as fast as they’re rising now. So something special has to be going on. Second, except for the last century, temperature changes have followed the well-known slow-changing variations in the earth’s orbit, the tilt of its axis, and continental drift.
But in less than the last 100 years, temperature has for the first time risen above what those variations call for. Is anything special going on to explain that? Absolutely! The amount by which the temperature has risen above the natural level is almost exactly parallel to the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our air.
Rossi pokes fun at Al Gore. Let me say that I don’t get my information from Gore or from blogs or talking heads. I get it from the original scientific literature — the same literature that climate skeptic Richard Muller studied carefully, and which changed him from an opponent to a supporter.
John F. Moore
Libertyville