Where is biggest threat to climate?

Climate change letters published on this page are often long on emotion and very short on data. The following is for "climate alarmists," keeping in mind that I do accept that the data show a modest global temperature increase over the last 120 years, part of which is likely due to human influences such as population growth from 1.9 billion to 7.6 human souls, increased CO2 emissions, and major worldwide land use changes.

The atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 332 ppm in 1977 and today it is 410 ppm. The latest data show that the U.S. share of global CO2 emissions is 15.2 percent, the China/India contribution is 34.6 percent and Europe logs in at 12.4 percent. Moreover, the rate of emissions over the last 10 years for India/China has been increasing at 1.9 percent per annum while the U.S. and European emissions have been declining at 1.2 percent per year, despite population growth.

To put these numbers in perspective, if the United States cut all carbon emissions, essentially destroying our economy, the world would be only 0.14 degrees C cooler by 2100. This would seem to raise the question of where would or should climate alarmists attack emission growth, the U.S. or China/India? Which segment of the globe is the greater "threat?"

The working theory is that an increase in CO2 will cause an increase in surface temperature. None of the major data sets (including the adjusted NOAA/NASA data set) shows the accelerating warming projected by IPCC climate models, twice as much as has been observed, yet we attempt to use these models to forecast temperatures and catastrophic occurrences a century from now.

Many of the letters also use the very imprecise and unscientific term, "extreme." I would suggest that those who use this term to describe weather events provide a clear definition.

Joe H. Heater

Palatine