Dear editor,
Re. Hot gases spew from legislature, Tom Fletcher column, Nov. 6 Comox Valley Record:
Honestly, it’s as though Tom Fletcher can read our minds up here in the Comox Valley. For example, he says that “all left-thinking people insist the climate debate is over.”
I’m with him there. I’m not sure when the climate debate became a left/right thing, but I suspect it has to do with graphs. It seems like these days when kids enter university they are immediately channelled either to the left, or to the right: scientists and liberal arts to the left, business and other correct thinkers to the right. It didn’t used to be like that.
For the next several years all the students are then shown graphs - lots of graphs. Those on the right are correctly shown graphs that have to do with money - how it acts, what it does, what it thinks, and how to make more of it. Those on the left, and I think this may be where we go wrong, are shown all kinds of other graphs of questionable origins. One graph I saw showed greenhouse gas levels going along with little bumps and valleys for a MILLION years, and then for the last hundred years there’s a line that just zooms almost straight up.
The “scientists” tested ice core samples to tell us that. C’mon now. One thing wrong with that is graphs should all be rounded and curvy, like those the business guys are shown. In fact, the use of graphs should be limited to dollars. I don’t like surprises.
Tom goes on to mention that methane is the main ingredient of farts, and that carbon dioxide is a key plant food and a component of exhaled breath that has been “rebranded as pollution.” It sounds to me like these are friendly little gases and the more we can get of them, the merrier. With the number of trees being cut down all over the world every day, I’m all in favour of feeding the trees that are left. And old Tom is sure doing his part - he’s got methane coming out of both ends! I say “good on ya’ Tom.
Harvey Hendrickson
Courtenay