I resist writing a response to Al Fonzi’s opinion pieces, and someone usually says it for me, but this week I cannot. Al, you are not a climate scientist, you have proven your allegiance to the fossil fuel industry on many occasions. Perhaps you think using every spec of carbon-based energy a good idea; I am sure Big Oil agrees. However, Mother Nature spent millions of years sequestering all that fossil fuel, thus enabling the planet adaptability for a diverse population of biological species.

We have, in the last 100 years, undone what took many million millennia to accomplish: increase the CO2 levels from about 200 ppm (parts per million), to more than 400 ppm. Climate scientists do not all agree, it is true—many of them are paid fossil fuel workers or lobbyists. I think most of us agree, when we see a picture of a smoke stack spewing smoke, and imagine a few hundred thousand more of them doing the same thing around the world, we have a problem.

Saying that the climate changes naturally is true, but not as radically as the difference in the last 30 years. When the dinosaurs saw a radical shift in climate, perhaps due to a large asteroid striking the earth, their time on the planet was over. Human beings have the capacity to prevent a climatic extinction; all we have to overcome is greed.

-- David Deick - Atascadero