There are still quite a few folks out there who don’t believe that greenhouse gasses such as CO2 and methane present a serious problem for our planet.
The difficulty in understanding greenhouse gas danger is the time involved.
In the distant past, Earth has been far hotter than it is now but that was 50 million years ago. Humans only started producing large amounts of CO2 and methane about 200 years ago. Two hundred years is just a speck of time compared to the age of the earth.
Climate change is happening at lightning-fast speed compared to the age of earth. Don’t worry about what caused the ice age over 10,000 years ago, worry about the greenhouse gasses that have risen 50 per cent in less than 200 years.
Ask the people who have just had their houses burn to the ground in the northern hemisphere heat.
They will tell you that the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gasses is real and it is now. Storms that used to occur every 100 years now occur every three years.
Insurance companies will soon stop insuring houses in low lying areas. Without insurance, no bank will offer a mortgage.
Many people will soon discover that their lovely house next to the sea is suddenly worthless. We are talking 40,000 homes in New Zealand.
Some people are certain that their high school education makes them smarter than NASA climate model scientists, but they are dead wrong.
John Caldwell
Howick
