Retorts

I'm Worried

My earnest congratulations on the editorial policy of the "New Zealand Science Monthly" which has led you to raise doubts as to the commonly-held fears of a Greenhouse holocaust. I hope that you will not be deterred by the inevitable criticism and opposition that will follow.

Congratulations, too, on the choice of John Daly as the author of your article. I'm sure that a study of his "Greenhouse Trap" would bring a new outlook to anyone who has fallen into the almost unanimous state of scientific opinion in regard to Greenhouse dangers.

Let those people who are so concerned about the current rise in global temperature of about half a degree over the last 100 years explain the global temperature changes which came and went before Man's activities could have caused them: the Climatic Optimum (+2-3C), the Little Climatic Optimum (about +1C), and the Little Ice Age (-0.4C). Also, why does no-one feel the need to explain the 0.4C reduction over the 30 years between the 1940s and the 1970s?

Certainly the Greenhouse Effect is real -- and one of the factors on which the Earth depends to maintain its steady global temperature. But there are no reliable signs that it is increasing, indeed there is a most impeccable argument that it is not.

Only good can come from your courageous stand -- the more strength to your arm.

P. A. Toynbee, Wellington