SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) --

To the Editor: 

 

Those of us who read the Mountain Mail regularly already know Rick Coddington is a conspiracy theorist. His latest column pooh-poohing global warming (GW) certainly is in character. 

However, I’d urge him to visit three parts of the world pretty soon. My hope is that, after doing so, he might want to revise his conclusions about whether GW is really happening and why.

First stop would be northern Alaska to visit with one or more of the Inupiat or related bands of Native Americans.



They’ll probably tell you about how long the ice lasted in the Good Old Days and how much longer summer lasts now, and how much higher the sea level is in front of their village. Talk to the elders; try to convince them that GW is a myth. Lots of luck!   

The second stop would be where we used to live, between Miami and Homestead in South Florida.

Just a decade or so ago, there were still agricultural fields along Florida’s Turnpike through there. (Rick, living as you do in the fifth largest state, which has only 2 million people in it, you may underestimate how many people there really are Back East and elsewhere in the world.  It’s not like Catron County.)

The last stop would be Hawaii’s Big Island. On the top of Mauna Loa (or is it Mauna Kea) is where the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been measured daily for decades (up-and-down within each year but consistently up ever since they made their first measurements).

Just don’t forget to tell them that they should stop lying about their data. 

Bob Merkel

Socorro