Dear editor,
I was surprised by the comments of Courtenay mayor Larry Jangula, who was quoted as saying he didn’t believe in human–caused climate change.
This is an amazing denial of the massive evidence that human production of carbon dioxide is indeed warming the planet.
Mr. Jangula is ignoring the IPCC. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change involves thousands of scientists from around the globe who gather all the peer-reviewed scientific publications they can find and assemble them into a report.
The evidence is conclusive that human production of carbon dioxide is indeed warming the planet.
How can Mr. Jangula ignore the daily news of global warming events like the melting of the icecaps, pine-beetle infestations of our forests, extensive droughts, frequent floods, increased extreme weather events like hurricanes and tornados, the warming of the ocean, the acidification of the ocean, rising sea levels and record-breaking high temperatures around the world?
The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas in the in the Earth's atmosphere recently passed 400 ppm (parts per million) according to the Mauna Lao Observatory in Hawaii, where researchers have been recording levels of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1957.
This is fact, not fantasy.
How disturbing it is to see an elected official display so much ignorance, but I suppose that is why people voted for him. They want business as usual.
A prudent course of action would be to cut our carbon emissions as quickly as possible, not promote more production of the tar sands and LNG. A wise politician would be planning to mitigate the effects of global warming on their community.
Does Mr. Jangula have a flood plan in place for downtown Courtenay?
As long as leaders like Mr. Jangula and the people that support him insist on denying the realities of global warming, we are headed down the path of more destruction, more costs, and more human misery.
David Stevenson,
Comox