To the Editor:
The latest reports on global warning, though disturbing, should not surprise, considering we are two decades removed from the benchmarks established by the Kyoto protocols and mankind has been exceeding those caps with annual increases ever since. It serves no purpose to debate the merits of global warming because all the best science available supports the predictions made by the U.S. military in the early 1950s. They took the long view, which is why we can see that it is happening faster than expected.
Bob Lutz is no James Hansen, whose work does not need the blessings of Rush Limbaugh, and denying man's role in global warming is the purpose of the skeptical science financed by oil executives who have also been very generous to the political careers of many for more than a century. The hole in the ozone layer, the dead zones being created by plastic in the world's oceans and the over-fishing of tuna, which has led to the population explosion of jellyfish, are the direct result of human endeavors. So it is with global warming. But deniers seem to prefer keeping their heads in the sand and making fools of themselves in public by mocking someone more learned than themselves.
While it is too late to undo what was set in motion by the failure to do what was necessary 60 years ago, today's leaders need to exercise some foresight and recognize the future is near. Population shifts and loss of farmland are issues best prepared for and innovative ideas like biofuel from algae, the basis of petroleum by the way, need to be explored because corn for ethanol will no longer be an option.
Time is running out.
Elizabeth Mackey
Syracuse
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