Climate Change

In response to Dana Knighten's recent commentary ("Cool solution for a warming planet," Aug. 9), I would revise and expand on her observation on global warming. "Climate change is nonpartisan, nondenominational, non-nationalistic... " - and non-sense.   Dave Reich, Perry Hall

Kudos to the National Science Foundation and the states of Maryland and Delaware for adopting a curriculum to teach the science of global warming and climate change ("A grant to help teach climate change," Aug. 16). We need to address this issue before we witness parts of the Inner Harbor and the Eastern Shore go underwater. Some may dispute the approach, but there's no dispute among the scientific community about whether climate change represents an existential threat to the planet unless humans take drastic steps to reverse the trend.

I appreciate James McGarry's attempt to inject some common sense into the discussion of climate change, and I agree with many of the actions he proposes ("Climate change? Forget it," Nov. 14). However, these actions presume that all parties agree that climate change is caused by human activities — specifically, by burning fossil fuels. Although the science on this point is quite firm, the skeptics continue to deny that climate change has anything to do with human activities.

In your editorial on Doha's failure ("Global climate talks stall - again," Dec. 11), you wrote: "The people who went to the polls last month knew which candidate favored stronger action in this arena and voted for him. " We voted for President Barack Obama to set sane energy policies, rational environmental policies and logical fiscal policies. Until the House is ready to present him with the sensible fiscal legislation he wants, President Obama should ignore fiscal issues and focus on educating the public on the energy and environmental legislation needed to slow climate change.

Hurricane Sandy is one more dramatic demonstration that climate change and its extreme weather patterns are now part of our future. Although we're unlikely to reverse climate change, we can still mitigate its effects by reducing our driving, our energy use and our meat consumption. Yes, meat consumption. A 2006 United Nations report estimated that meat consumption accounts for 18 percent of man-made greenhouse gases. A 2009 article in the respected World Watch magazine suggested the real figure may be closer to 50 percent.

In "Calvert Cliffs 3 makes no sense" (March 10), Ellen Vancko is adamant that Maryland state government should not in any way underwrite or subsidize a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear facility. Yet while she eschews support for nuclear energy, she implies that it, unlike other forms of renewable energy, will have an effect on "climate change. " Based on that, Ms. Vancko would be more than willing to subsidize the proven inefficiency and lack of cost-effectiveness of solar and wind power — to the detriment of a proven, efficient and world-wide major energy source: nuclear power.

Reading your recent collection of letters on climate change ("Room for debate," Oct. 29), I wonder how useful such debates are. A businessman writes about the science behind climate change, and readers with no background in science respond. Is there anything to be learned from these amateurish exchanges? My favorite contribution is the one that explains that the most significant source of carbon dioxide comes from decaying kelp. I have no idea whether that is true (one would have to believe some scientific study, wouldn't one?

Yes, let's talk about why despite so much climate silence, the power and mendacity of the fossil fuel industry has intimidated the American political and media system into remaining silent about the chief threat to our existence ("Now can we talk about it?" Nov. 1). And let's talk about the required solution to the problem: a rebated or revenue-neutral carbon fee that will protect consumers while inducing the energy industry to ramp up investment in clean, reliable power. It will take political courage to make this solution a reality.

I am glad to see that The Sun finally printed a factual response to so called man-made global warming ("Get past alarmism on global warming," Oct. 26). Writer Richard Haddad has it right and every one who has studied high school physics or chemistry should know carbon dioxide is released from sea water as temperature increases. An additional point to be made is that the largest source of carbon dioxide in the world (greater than all power plants combined) is the thousands of square miles of decaying kelp beds in the Sargasso Sea near the equator in the Atlantic Ocean.

I have a lot of respect for Mike Tidwell, but I was disappointed in his op-ed piece, "The sky really is falling" (Feb. 14). In my opinion, it was a classic piece of Chicken Little journalism. No matter what weather we have -- snow, drought, heat or cold -- virtually anything that is out of the normal is blamed on global warming. Match a single extreme weather event with a single facet of a complex, multifaceted theory, and the conclusion is, "Aha! Proof! The sky is falling!" In fact, the global climate is an extremely complex, interrelated and incompletely understood system, affected by much more than air pollutant emissions from human activities.