Letters

From the May 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

There is a simpler solution. Stick a large bright red "Sold As-Is" sticker on the front of the box where the buyer can see it before paying for it. The software makers may not like this truth-in-advertising solution, but it will allow buyers to make informed decisions before paying.

Garnet Harris
Hagerstown, MD
[e-mail]

Prudence or Pessimism?

In his review of Hard Green ("Preservation Instincts," February), Ronald Bailey joins author Peter Huber in castigating Al Gore for using the "sandpile" metaphor for environmental threats such as global warming. They would do well to ignore the metaphor and face the evidence. Global warming is a real and serious danger.

The increase in atmospheric CO2 levels has coincided with melting ice sheets in both the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica and an increase in extreme weather. The 1990s is the warmest decade since records have been kept, according to research by the universities of Massachusetts and Arizona on ice cores and tree rings.

Al Gore is a prudent man at a time when prudence is warranted. The biological capital of planet Earth was amassed over 4 billion years in the greatest free market of all: the evolution of life. Preserving its glorious diversity is a cause worthy of dedication and sacrifice.

Georgette Perry
Huntsville, AL

Ronald Bailey replies: The great thing about the "sandpile" metaphor is that it allows one to dismiss previous findings and evidence. In the case of global warming, the current climate models on which Al Gore and others rely show gradual warming over the next century, no abruptly collapsing sandpiles.

For a longer discussion of global warming, see my article in this issue (see page 18). As for Antarctic ice, a peer-reviewed article in Science last year found that the rate of melting had not increased, but was still at a steady pace as a result of the ending of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Arctic sea ice does appear to be thinning, but it had substantially thickened and expanded between the 1940s and the 1970s.

Despite the claims made by environmental activists, climatologists generally agree that extreme weather events like hurricanes have not increased in the second half of the 20th century. As for being the "warmest" decade on record, the same tree rings show that the period 800-1200 A.D. was generally warmer than it is now, though we are getting close. Global warming poses far less of a threat to the diversity of life than poverty and hunger in the developing world do. Poor hungry people will chop down forests and kill wildlife to feed themselves and their families. Fostering rapid economic growth in developing countries, rather than exhorting them to "dedication and sacrifice," is a far more effective policy for preserving the world's diversity of plants and animals in the long run. That's real prudence.

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