Climate change now occurring with unprecedented speed

To The Daily Sun,

Coal is almost over in the U.S. In the last decade, 34,000 U.S. coal mining jobs have disappeared, leaving about 52,000. Renewables and natural gas are replacing obsolete coal and as of last April, renewables alone now account for more power generation than coal. In 2006, coal provided 49 percent of the country’s electricity; now it's at 27 percent. Natural gas and renewables are cleaner and cheaper and have resulted in fewer emissions in the U.S. over the past decade. At some point, renewables will also replace a lot of natural gas power. To some, natural gas was supposed to be the bridge to renewables, but wind and solar have gotten cheaper much faster than expected and in some places solar and wind with battery storage is already cheaper than new natural gas plants.

Russ Wiles clearly missed my recent letter on the present rapid rate of increase in atmospheric CO2. He absurdly believes today's climate change is a natural cycle. (See https://www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/now-is-very-different-from-when-the-dinosaurs-roamed/article_ed25b870-b794-11e9-9dd8-e7f7403067e1.html) I will summarize: Earth has gone through many changes but all those changes took tens to hundreds of thousands of years or more; not in a geologic blink of an eye as we have done since 1850. Nowhere in the geologic record has this happened before. This all amounts to a rise in CO2 that is 100 to 200 times as fast as the transition into the Holocene from the Ice Age and thousands of times faster than the fastest rise in atmospheric CO2 found in geologic history, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Another errant claim made by climate quacks and right-wing politicians is that more CO2 is good because we will get bigger plants. Computer monitored "free air" field tests around the world have shown that the extra growth in crops grown under conditions of increased CO2 is in indigestible cellulose, sugars, and starches. This extra growth comes with diminished nutritional value of crops, especially essential micro-nutrients. The ratio of sugars to micro-nutrients is changing with higher CO2 concentrations which means we will have to eat more sugars and starches in the future in order to meet our minimum daily requirements. Over two billion people are at risk for protein, iron, zinc, and other deficiencies and this won't help.

The latest poll is more bad news for the fake experts and their sheep. From MarketWatch last Friday: "The number of Republican voters aged 18-34 who are worried about the issue rose by 18 percentage points to 67 percent, said the poll, which also showed a 10-percentage-point increase among all U.S. Republicans who said they tried “to live eco-consciously.”

James Veverka

Tilton