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Pollution is bad for the planet

Tourist police volunteers doing an outstanding job

Looking for missing person

Cut and paste

Pollution is bad for the planet

Editor;
I’d like to settle this dispute over global warming once and for all. I wish every earthling could read this: The climate around the world is always changing. Everything in the universe is in flux. It’s a law of physics and nature. The silly question being bantered about is whether it is getting warmer or colder at the moment. Wake up! It doesn’t make any difference.
Because what’s really at the heart of this argument is whether man-made pollution is at least partly to blame for climate change. And it’s a stupid question.
The truly important question is: Is all the man-made pollution doing the planet Earth and its inhabitants any good?
If your answer is yes, you should have your head examined, or at least live in a Chinese city for a few months.
If your answer is no, then something should be done to curtail and control pollution.
So there it is. Pollution is bad for the planet, whether its getting warmer or colder.
Bubba Jones

Tourist police volunteers doing an outstanding job

Editor;
After watching the new documentary series on English TV featuring the foreign volunteers, I’ve got to say, Howard Miller, and the rest of the foreign volunteers, you’re doing an outstanding job under difficult circumstances. Everyone is capable of getting into trouble after a few drinks. The Thai police have the language barrier and from what I can see, and these guys do their best to sort out the problems amicably. Pat on the back lads.
Mickyfin,
Burnley

Looking for missing person

Editor;
Have any of your readers seen this man - Jim Derry? He has been missing from his home in Pattaya for approximately 5 weeks.
If so, please email kentcd46 @yahoo.co.uk or text 44 (0) 77636 93752 as his family in the UK are extremely worried about him.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Christine Derry

Cut and paste

Editor;
In a recent letter on the discussion over “manmade global warming myth”, Freddie questions my cut and paste and suggests that I should quote my sources. I might also suggest to you Freddie to do what you say and not what you do, for I see nothing as far as sources for what you say.
I would like to point out a few that I have used and you should have seen my sources. I mentioned the researchers at England’s Newcastle University; the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate; March 14, 2005 report from the activist group World Wildlife Fund (WWF); Newcastle University study; article on Global warming boost to glaciers in BBC, and National Geographic News, etc.
So, Freddie, take more care in reading my letters before forming your incorrect opinion. Oh yes Freddie, could you please show your sources you quoted from in your letters. You said, “We can ignore man’s destruction of rainforests and huge increase in CO2 emissions, or we can do something about it now, when we still have a chance,” as if you and a few others think CO2 is “bad”.
Since you have problems with seeing my sources in my letters, I got a school book on the information on CO2, so it is easy to follow. “People breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, plants ‘breathe’ in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen.” It seems that some scientists and journalists missed that day of class. “The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops. It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change. Plants survive by extracting CO2 from the air and using sunlight to convert it into proteins and sugars. Since 1750 the concentration in the air has risen from of CO2 278 parts per million (ppm) to more than 380 ppm, making it easier for plants to acquire the CO2 needed for rapid growth. Plants are getting bigger and stronger, taking in more CO2” and, I presume, sending out more O2.
Could it be that a little extra CO2 in the atmosphere, rather than spelling out doom for every living thing on the planet, is ... a good thing? Could it be that increased CO2 will mean stronger plants, and thusly more and better crops? Could it be that efforts to stem the tide of the increase in CO2 will lead to decreases in food production and food shortages across the globe?
Lawrence Solomon wrote a column “in praise of CO2” (that is a source Freddie) “Doubling the jeopardy for Earth is Man”. Unlike the many scientists who welcome CO2 for its benefits, many other scientists and most governments believe carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant that must be removed from the atmosphere at all costs.
Governments around the world are now enacting massive programs and spending 100’s of billions of dollars of its citizens tax money in an effort to remove as much as 80% of the carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere. If these governments are right, they will have done us all a service. If they are wrong, the service could be all ill, with food production dropping world wide, and the countless ecological niches on which living creatures depend stressed.
The second order effects could be dire, too. To bolster food production, humans will likely turn to energy intensive manufactured fertilizers, depleting our store of non-renewable resources.
Amazingly, the risks of action are arguably at least as real as the risks of inaction. Freddie, you did prove that Al Gore is flat out wrong with his predictions that sea levels will rise 7 feet in the near future, with your true fact that sea levels are rising 7 inches per century and have been for 10,000 years.
Bob,
Pattaya

Letters published in the Mailbag of Pattaya Mail
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