Letter: Global temperatures have always changed

Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.

Fact: Our globe is warming. "Since 1900, the average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.2-1.4F," according to the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site.

Speculation: "The average surface temperature of the Earth is likely to increase by 2.5 to 10.4F by the end of the 21st century, relative to 1990," according to the EPA.

While I am an ardent environmentalist, I have some questions regarding the latest media-driven (remember global cooling in the '70s) catastrophe. There is little doubt our globe is getting warmer. However, there appears to be substantial deception concerning the role of human beings. The eco-leftists and other airheads like Al ("An Inconvenient Truth") Gore are spreading a specious, hysterical and anti-capitalist ideology around the globe.

I grew up in northeast Oregon near Wallowa Lake, which was formed by an advancing glacier. What caused that glacier to melt? Mastodon flatulence? Neanderthals and modern humans had to deal with advancing and retreating glaciers during early human history. What caused the glacial variations then? Certainly not Cro-Magnon SUVs or Native coal fire plants.

Would the global warming alarmists please specify what unendurable devastation is going to befall our globe if the temperature increases 2-10 degrees in the next century? Some geographical locations will get warmer, some cooler, some wetter, and some drier. The sea level will continue to rise as it has for eons. Some people will appreciate change and others won't. The "inconvenient truth" is that change is not destruction, especially since we have decades to acclimate.

Please, let's continue to clean the air and water that we have mucked-up and focus our hysteria on some other bogeyman.

F. Jay Harrell, Las Vegas