Jerome Manis’ July 6th letter in ”’The Honolulu Advertiser”’ is typical of
the sloppy logic of ecoalarmists like Al Gore who are pushing as settled
fact a radical, unproven hypothesis in an attempt to seize political
power.
Mr. Manis’ letter claims that our “mayor, governor and president
seem to ignore the warnings” that would supposedly indicate the onset of
allegedly man-made global warming, including “torrential rainfalls,
overflowing rivers, failed dams and levees, … tsunamis and
earthquakes.”
Silly me … I mistakenly thought that the “torrential rainfalls and
overflowing rivers” in Hawaii were a predictable, seasonal phenomenon
similar to the predictable, seasonal monsoons that annually soak India.
I wrongly thought that the failed dams on Kauai were caused by inadequate
inspections and maintenance. I imprudently thought that the failed
levees in New Orleans were caused by engineering and construction flaws,
coupled with upstream levees that caused sediments that used to replenish
the Delta region to instead be dumped into the Gulf of Mexico.
I erroneously thought that earthquakes are caused by plate tectonics, and
that the Indonesian tsunami was caused by an underwater earthquake
triggered by those plate tectonics. But thanks to Mr. Manis’
enlightening letter, I now know that all these were in fact caused by a
tiny change in the atmospheric balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide.
The big picture: to prove that global warming is primarily man-made
rather than due to natural fluctuations in climate, you first have to
come up with a comprehensive climatic model that explains and
retroactively predicts past natural fluctuations, such as the “Little Ice
Age” in the 1800s that occurred despite rising industrialization and CO2
levels, or the Medieval Warm Period that occurred despite a lack of
industrialization.
And nobody has done that — except Al Gore, who
squeezed that research in while also inventing the Internet.
”’Jim Henshaw, a resident of Kailua, HI, can be reached via email at”’ mailto:lindamd1@juno.com
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