A July 8 letter speaks of “insanity and nonsense” in recent Democratic presidential debates.
Kind of hyperbolic, but could apply similarly to the 2015 Republican debate, where another 10 contenders also failed to actually debate and inevitably reduced themselves, some quite happily, to simply vying for attention, the current mainstay of political discourse.
The writer refutes alleged liberal wrongheadedness with the usual tiresome hand-waving, ending with “the idea that carbon dioxide will destroy the Earth if it goes up slightly ignores both that it is necessary for life on earth and that the level was 20 times higher during the last ice age.”
So much hyperbole, so little space.
Three CO2 issues:
• Not sure who claims a CO2 increase will destroy the Earth. It is the narrow comfort zones of large life forms, us for example, that are at risk.
While all life requires CO2 for food production, increased CO2, while promoting plant growth, also dilutes plant nutritional value, and boosts plant nutrient and water demands, straining limited resources.
• And it increases ocean acidity, among other unpleasant things.
The writer is perhaps using a common “denier” misquote of CO2 estimates of 10 to 20 times current levels thought to have occurred during an ice age 450 million years ago.
• CO2 levels fell during the actual last major ice age starting 120,000 years ago from about 300 ppm to around 185 ppm and rose by the end 11,700 years ago to about 280 ppm, remaining there, on average, until the Industrial Age.
Now it’s 411 ppm.
Let’s leave “insanity and nonsense” to our hijacked electoral process.
Chuck Main,
Sequim