Willow Glen Resident

Letters & Opinions

Speak Out

150 years of weather
records, a mere blink

While I appreciate Moryt Milo's opinion and review of Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, in the Jan. 10 edition of the newspaper, I think there is one point you have failed to consider. Weather records have been maintained for only about the last 150 years, while the Earth has been in existence for several billion.

One hundred and fifty years is not even a percentage point of the Earth's time in existence. We really have no way of knowing what weather patterns or corrections naturally occur every 500, 5,000, or 5 million years. Maybe it is possible that these type of weather changes are recurring but not documented. Maybe this type of weather scenario happens every 100,000 years. How would we know?

While greenhouse gases are certainly not beneficial to the environment, I think that the gases shot into the atmosphere from volcanoes over the course of Earth's development may have been equally damaging.

I am not saying that Gore is definitely wrong in his conclusions; however, I do believe that equal time should be given to the possibility that there are trends in the Earth's weather evolution that have not been chronicled, that we do not understand and that we might not be responsible for.

Kristin Khanna

San jJose

The naysayers get
fewer and thinner

Thanks so much for Moryt Milo's column in the Jan. 10 issue of the Willow Glen Resident on An Inconvenient Truth. I'm heartened whenever I see people doing their part to "get the word out" on this vital topic. The first step is education, and that's the beauty of Al Gore's documentary, as it is so jam-packed with scientific information yet presented in an accessible manner. The naysayers' voices are getting fewer and tinier, as their ability to obscure the obvious diminishes in light of overwhelming scientific evidence.

So again, thank you.

Debbie Palmer

Willow Glen

Scientists differ on
global warming issue

An opinion piece in the Jan. 10 issue of Resident inferred that Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is the consensus on causes of global warming. However, many scientists have differing views on the effect that human activity has on climate change. For politically correct reasons, they are not being heard.

One only has to plot recession of glaciers for the last 20,000 years to understand Earth is in an extended warming cycle. High on mountainsides around Salt Lake City are waterlines from Lake Bonneville, a 20,000-square-mile, 1,000-feet-deep lake that covered most of northern Utah when the last glacier receded. The glacier that created the lake disappeared, and most of the lake dried up before human activity affected the climate.

Drive from eastern South Dakota into North Dakota and you'll travel down into an area that was once Lake Agassiz, a vast 170,000-square-mile, several hundred feet deep lake that covered the area when the glacier receded 12,000 years ago. The glacier that created the lake disappeared, and the lake dried up before human activity affected the climate.

Go to the top of the Empire State Building in New York City and you'll be standing at about the same level as the glacier that covered Manhattan 12,000 years ago. That glacier disappeared before human activity affected the climate.

In the late 1700s explorers didn't know Alaska's Glacier Bay existed because glaciers covered the coastline. In 1879, John Muir noted the glaciers had receded 45 miles, revealing Glacier Bay. Since 1879, glaciers have retreated an additional 40 miles, exposing the full length of what Glacier Bay is today. Go to http://home.nps.gov/applications/parks/glba/ppMaps/ACF30C1.pdf (zoom to 200 percent, scroll over Glacier Bay) to see that most glacial recession there happened before human activity affected climate. Bottom line, our climate is in a very long-term warming cycle, and human effects are insignificant relative to sunspot activity and Earth's orbit wobble effects.

Gore's conclusions are based on selective use of data. If you want to know the other side of the debate, do independent research. A good place to start is www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.

Al Day

San Jose

Smog illustrates the
changes in climate

I wanted to express my thanks to Moryt Milo for her opinion piece on global warming ("Wacky weather: Another sign of global warming?") in the Jan. 10 issue of the Resident. I saw An Inconvenient Truth when it came out in the theaters and was similarly overwhelmed.

I recall when smog was only a city problem. Places like Houston and L.A. had problems, and that was it. Little did we know how global it really was.

I just finished writing an article for American Bungalow Magazine that touches on a house I have designed for Palm Haven. It will be under construction in 2007 and with any luck be finished in 2007 as well. Though it will be a historic-style home, I plan on incorporating several environmentally sensitive elements to put a dent in its energy consumption.

My goal is to set good examples for people to follow when looking at their own remodels. Many thanks again,

Michael Borbely

Palm Haven