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Letters: There is no ‘tipping point’

Maximum-boundary threshold for atmospheric carbon dioxide untrue

Because we know that atmospheric Co2 concentrations are now at the lower range that they’ve been for hundreds of millions of years, I find it dumbfounding that the Green Party’s Elizabeth May would incite people’s imaginations by manufacturing and spreading as widely and as loudly as possible the catch word “tipping point.”

She is trying to raise the spectre of a looming, fictional, maximum-boundary threshold for atmospheric Co2 — allegedly, imminently approaching — after which, chaos and mass destruction will follow in a runaway global warming episode.

The manipulation of facts to support one’s preferred point of view is called fraud in academic circles.

I would point out too that sea levels have risen some 300 feet since the most recent glacial extreme, a few more tens of feet would not be such a stretch.

That same ice is still in retreat, albeit at a much slowed rate.

And if Ms. May is basing her tipping point theory on the so-called butterfly effect; such a thing occurs in fixed model computer programs, but in reality a single butterfly, indeed, all the butterflies in the world, cannot cause a thunderstorm. The two dissimilar things do not have any appreciable influence on one another.

There is no tipping point. Coupled with Ms. May’s imaginary tipping point is the new Green Party outcry at the ocean’s increasing acidity, when in fact, the ocean is already alkaline, and can only become more or less alkaline. It is tending towards neutrality not acidity.

As to why the ocean’s alkalinity is reduced ever so slightly, perhaps we should point the finger at the Americans, who get most of their electrical power burning coal.

The mercury and the sulphates emitted from this practise is likely the cause of any oceanic PH changes.

Maybe Ms. May should try to reason with the easy going, modest, peaceful Americans. Maybe they will stop burning coal if you just ask them.

In the meantime, Ms. May, quit bugging us here in Canada, because we’ve got a country to run.

N.E. MacNab

Shirley