Is the hot sky falling?

It’s unfortunate that Mr. Berman had to rely on repeating worn out political talking points when replying to my letter concerning climate change.

Repeating this kind of misinformation is a danger to us all - misinformation based on a campaign financed by the oil industry and designed to manufacture controversy. However, Mr. Berman is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.

Contrary to Mr. Berman’s assertions,

The National Snow and Ice Data Center, as of July 13, 2013, reported that Arctic land ice is depleting at a rate 61 percent faster than the average from 1981 to 2010.

Antarctic sea ice is gaining but land-based ice is melting rapidly contributing to the rise in sea levels.

The U.S. Endangered Species Act lists the polar bear as a threatened species because of this loss of land ice.

And Professor James Hansen, former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whom Mr. Berman referred to, stated on July 10, 2013 that the world is on the verge of consuming enough fossil fuel to create a tipping point that would produce a “different practically uninhabitable planet” by triggering “a low end runaway greenhouse effect.”

I could only wish that people like Mr. Berman were right. Then we all could sleep a little better.

But he’s not.
Mr. Berman referred earlier to Chicken Little but I would refer him to another aviary metaphor who sticks its head in the sand.

Alan Fernandez
Florida