Editor’s Note: George Smith sent us the following letter on global warming. It is the second of two parts. [Part 1 click here] Mr. Smith designed and built a weather station at the top of his home, has two degrees from Yale University’s School of Engineering and is a past member of the American Meteorological Society.
This is in response to two letters appearing in the Gloucester Daily Times questioning man-made global warming. I would like to share my reply with the Cricket readers. The allegations against the International Panel on Climate Change have proved to be bogus, and the skeptics mentioned are relatively unknown. In fact, I would be interested in knowing who they work for.
The underlying driver of global warming is the relentless increase in population and consumption with the poorer Third World aspiring to consume like us. Such Third World aspirations will not be possible for various reasons. But what we will see, long term, is human migration that will make today's migration into Europe and North America look very small by comparison.
It is hard to predict when but probably within 20–40 years we will start to see flooding of sea coast cities, crop failures in the tropics and diminished ocean fisheries. Just last week, our government predicted declining USA corn and soybean production and higher prices in the near future because these crops are heat sensitive.
We will be seeing internal migration as our cities and low-lying Southeast and Gulf coasts are inundated. This will coincide with a mass movement of people from South Asia, Africa and the Americas to Europe and North America.
Our current border problems seem small by comparison, but it is time to take population migration out of politics and get it under control before we are overwhelmed by it in the future.
Of course, we understand and sympathize with people wanting to escape extreme poverty, gangs and murder with dysfunctional governments and their treatment at our border. Polls taken some years ago, before conditions got as bad as they are now, asked Latin Americans where they would like to live if given the chance. Some said Spain, but the large majority said USA.
We are beginning to see a change in the liberal media. Atlantic.com and the Washington Post recently raised the question about the many hundreds of millions of people in the rest of the world who live similar or worse conditions.
Europe, Canada and especially the US of A have the technology and relative wealth to make the world livable. But we can't do it if we are swamped and become dysfunctional ourselves. Look at the strong rise of far-right parties in Europe that threaten political stability there caused, at least in part, by recent migration from Afghanistan, Africa and, of course, Syria.
Looking at the big picture and the more distant future, there are three things we must start doing now:
George P. Smith, Manchester-by-the-Sea
