Global warming is return to normal

Letter to the Editor Copyright 1998 The Record (Bergen County, NJ) August 3, 1998

In the last few years there has been many news reports about global warming. Recently, President Clinton and Vice President Gore have predicted our inevitable doom if we don't change our evil ways.

Quite frankly, I find it amazing that our best meteorologists cannot forecast with absolute certainty tommorrow's weather, yet Clinton and Gore know for a fact that we are in a global warming trend. Moreover, they know absolutely that it is being caused by human activity. The majority of their evidence seems to be a few hundred years of climatic observations and some fairly recent atmospheric gas indications.

I am a paleontologist and have studied the fossil record of earth extensively. The earth is billions of years old, and climatic changes are measured in hundreds of thousands to millions of years. In almost all geological time periods, worldwide global temperatures were warmer than they are now. In other words, if it were possible to infer a norm, we would be in a global cool period. Additionally, we have also analyzed actual air trapped inside amber from many other time periods and have found higher carbon dioxide levels.

Even if we could somehow deduce that the world is warming from a few hundred years of data as some would insist, we would, geologically speaking, just be returning to our normal climate. Does this mean we should continue to pollute even more? Of course not. But let us not think we can destroy this earth either.

Edward Otte Saddle Brook, July 22

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