Climate change skepticism

With reference to the May 18 letter “Climate should concern you,” some fact-checking might be appropriate.

First, the Antarctic ice caps aren’t melting. Ice cannot melt when temperatures are below freezing. There are, however, a few glaciers in West Antarctica that are flowing and calving at unexpected rates, but the larger eastern area is gaining ice.

Second, climate change rate is not “occurring at a much faster rate than any changes that have occurred before.” Among scores of other episodes, during the Younger Dryas event about 13,000 years ago, temperatures dropped about 10 degrees in less than 10 years. This ended with a similar abrupt warming 1,300 years later.

Furthermore, since the last sentence in the letter refers to “global warming,” perhaps the author is unaware that global temperatures have flat-lined or somewhat cooled over the past 17 years, at the same time that atmospheric carbon dioxide is still increasing?

Lastly, numerous studies have shown no connection between “climate change” and extreme weather events.

A solar grand minimum, the first in over 200 years, has started or is coming soon. Another Little Ice Age will be far worse than any of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s warming scenarios.

Jerry Olson

Spokane