Ignorance is bliss, until

Vincent J. Curtis

4 May 23

RE: McMaster should show leadership.  Op-ed by Jane Jenner, a resident of Burlington and a Mac grad of ’73.

They say that ignorance is bliss, and the most blissful column of April 27 was written by Jane Jenner, who demanded that McMaster should not solve its power needs by building natural gas fired electrical generators on campus.  Presumably if Ontario Hydro did it off-site, that would be okay!

But those who casually think they know the climate change business, don’t.  In the first place, Mac, Hamilton, Canada can do nothing to stop the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere.  China, India, and Russia together emit about half of the world’s CO2 emissions, and they don’t care about the West’s concern about climate change.  They’re increasing fossil fuel usage dramatically and continually.  There is absolutely no point in Canada putting on sackcloth and ashes over climate.

Secondly, the climate crisis is a political make-up job.  The current global average temperature is 14.18℃, based upon an average of over 70,000 weather stations around the globe.  That’s 0.18℃ above the 1979-2000 average.  Global warming simply isn’t happening fast enough to reach a 1 degree rise by 2100.  And nobody has explained what’s so special about 16℃ that will cause global climate collapse.

The casual repetition of disprovable claims may suffice to convince the editor of a paper to run prosaic nonsense, but the publication of such nonsense only serves to embarrass the author so exposed.

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