Jim Hollingsworth’s letter of July 13 claims that there is no correlation between human actions and global warming. I appreciate his courtesy in reading my letter three times, but I feel he lacks an understanding of the causes of climate change.

He claims that the Earth has not significantly warmed in the past 10 years. In fact, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Weather Service, the last 12 months are the warmest on record, slightly above the year before. The year before that was also a record breaker. We are having constant steady temperature increases.

Oddly, he seems to believe that the oceans emit carbon dioxide rather than absorb it. In fact, the oceans are becoming more acidic — from atmospheric CO2. The growth of carbon dioxide in the ocean is causing shellfish’s shells to melt, according to the National Academy of Sciences. As the oceans warm and cease absorbing CO2, they will produce methane. The methane the oceans produce is 20 times as effective a greenhouse gas as is carbon dioxide. We know that there are 3,000 times as much methane frozen on the seafloor as is in the current atmosphere. In fact according to a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, at least two of the Great Extinctions were caused by methane spikes.

I am somewhat bemused at Mr. Hollingsworth’s assertion that carbon dioxide in excess is good for plant life. There are many other things needed in proportion for plants to flourish. Consider the Midwest crop drought, the Southwest forest fires, the Sahel drought, the East Asian flooding…

The fact is that as early as 1896 scientists knew that too much carbon dioxide could wreck the atmosphere. Look up Arrhenius’s work for proof. We knew in the 1950s that the atmosphere absorbed heat energy; the Air Force proved that while designing heat-seeking missiles, and the work of Keeling provided a baseline level of carbon dioxide. Since then, the Keeling Curve has shown humans are steadily raising CO2 levels.

The various “Hockey Sticks” (Mann’s is only one of many) show that temperature is steadily growing. Given a methane spike, we may well see a catastrophic rise in temperature. To quote Mr. Hollingsworth, “we are all on this planet together.”

I chose to answer Mr. Hollingsworth publicly because of his errors in fact and his failure to understand the danger to life on this planet. I hope this letter will cause alarm in others. Remember, the oceans are heating and acidifying, the land is baking and flooding, the air is producing derechos, tornados and hurricanes. Barring a major reduction in greenhouse gases, we will all cook together.

JEFF BOURGET

Coeur d’Alene