In his letter of July 20 to The Jewish Link, “Cover Climate Change,” Mr. Baruch Blum echoes the popular mantra that climate change poses an existential threat to humanity. In actuality, the earth’s climate has always been changing in the past, and will continue to change in the future.

The earth is about 4.5 billion (scientific) years old, and during this time has undergone unimaginable cataclysmic changes, generated by both external cosmic forces and internal geologic forces. For example, the earth “wobbles” in its orbit around the sun, and as a consequence undergoes periodic cooling and heating cycles. The earth has already endured five cooling (i.e., glacial) periods and four warming (i.e., interglacial) periods. It is now in its fifth warming cycle, which is projected by experts to last another 50,000 years.

As a scientist, I am dismayed to witness that today, climate change has become driven more by political, economic and social issues than by scientific ones. Accurate records of climate have been kept for only about 150 years or so, and even some of these are subjects of dispute. To base projections and policy on only about the most recent 150 years out of the total 4,500,000,000 (scientific) years of the earth’s existence, while ignoring what happened during the remaining 99.99999+% of that time, is foolhardy, and can lead to enormous miscalculations and faulty, even possibly disastrous, decisions. For example, predicting the demise of civilization in the next 10 to 15 years unless we eliminate fossil fuels, while at the same time mandating the use of electric vehicles powered by electricity generated mainly by nuclear and coal-burning power plants, defies logic.

On the larger issue, while renewable energy sources are being developed and their uses being gradually implemented, the enormous growth predicted for energy needs globally in the foreseeable future will almost certainly have to be filled using some combination of natural gas, nuclear power, coal and also fossil fuels. The main challenge for officials is how to best regulate their use in the interim to minimize any possible damage to the environment, and not to abruptly eliminate major sources of existing energy supplies, which will cause immense hardship to large segments of the global population.

Max Wisotsky
Highland Park