Letters to the Editor for March 17
FXBG Advance invites readers to submit letters to the editor. Letters should not exceed 500 words, include the writer’s name, city, and phone number (for contact purposes only), and should not include ad hominem attacks or inappropriate language. FXBG Advance reserves the right to edit all letters. Send your letters to mdavis@fxbgadvance.com.
Questioning ‘Climate Crisis’
Mr. Stewart’s denial of climate change {“Questioning Climate Change,”March 10) dismisses the fact that current CO2 levels are dangerously high because of our excessive use of fossil fuels. He pushes the concept that nuclear power will be the way of the future. It might be, but only if a valid plan is created and implemented for treating radioactive waste that kills living things for hundreds of thousands of years.
Over 97% percent of scientists believe that climate change is real; compare that to a recent survey that found 10% of Americans believe the Earth is flat and that COVID-19 vaccinations implanted microchips into people.
Everyone has the right to believe what they want, and searches on the internet will support whatever belief a person considers to be the truth. An interest in real science would help people understand some of the many science-based consequences of climate change, as well as understand why in many parts of the U.S. there are ever fewer homeowner policies as a result of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gas disasters.
What kind of person verbally attacks children? I take offense in Mr. Stewart’s comment that the intent of this event was to misinform the public. Nothing could be further from the truth. The students who participated in this event were brilliant in both their research and delivery, focusing on what everyday people can do to improve our world. These young people are our future - everyone who attended was surely inspired and given hope that solutions will be found and implemented by them, and others like them.
Mr. Stewart obviously did not attend the 4th Youth Climate Action Conference: Our Actions = Our Future. It allows high school and college students to select a topic negatively affecting the world’s ecological and climatic balance, research the topic, and present it to the public.
All attendees were captivated by the GreenTeens from Richmond and their proactive actions, the young Climate Reality Project organizer, and hearing how fast fashion is ruining our environment; raves were heard about the session on how to write effective letters to legislators and influencers; thoughtful faces watched a skit on how activists, businesses, and communities can work together to reduce the negative effects of climate change; detailed presentations on how groups are fighting to restore ecosystems and save flora and fauna around the world; and more. Students heard from local and state organizations about what they do, what kinds of jobs are available in the environmental sectors, and what volunteer and internship opportunities are available.
None of the students chose to cover the pros and cons of nuclear energy this year, but we would welcome any students to participate who would like to learn more and share their findings with other students and the public next year. I encourage Mr. Stewart and other climate change deniers to come to next year’s summit and open their minds to learning from these young adults instead of trying to demoralize and derail their efforts to make our world a better place.
Julie Kay
Trained leader with The Climate Reality Project
Co-founder of Fossil Free Fredericksburg and lead coordinator of the Fredericksburg youth-led climate conferences since 2018
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For Julie Kay and Leo Watkins
The library just purchased "The Case for Nukes", How we can beat Global Warming and create a free, open and magnificent future", by Robert Zubrin, and I'd highly recommend your reading it.
In response to Ms. Kay’s March 17th critique of my letter in the March 10th “Letters to the Editor”, she trots out the tired trope of climate denial. But I’ve never denied climate change, but just that there isn’t any existential crisis; warming has been fluctuating around a very gradual upward trend since the end of the last “Little Ice Age”. The effects have been mainly caused by a multiplicity of natural forces, with minor contributions from man-made CO2, the urban heat island effect and changes in the albedo. Her statement that “CO2 levels are dangerously high” is straight up nonsense, with not an iota of validity. In fact, the optimum atmospheric CO2 level for the plant kingdom would be about three times the 420 ppm level that it is now. More plants mean more intake of CO2 from the atmosphere and more food for herbivorous animals; more herbivorous animals mean more food for carnivorous and omnivorous animals. A win-win-win.
Let’s do some math: the CO2 level of the atmosphere has increased by 2.5ppm over many decades, and to double it to 840 (to make the plants lots happier) would take 420ppm/2.5 ppm/year = 168 years, or 16.8 decades (until the year 2192). Now, the earth’s atmosphere has been gently warming at the average rate of about 0.15C/decade as measured by satellite since the end of 1978. If we multiply the 16.8 decades times 0.15C/decade that = 2.52C rise. The contribution to the warming of CO2 (manmade CO2 and natural CO2) for the doubling is about 1.0C, per van Wijngaarden and Happer Mar 2023, in Cornell University asXiv:2302.00808, which as far as I know is the latest and best science. That means the human contribution to warming is 1.0/2.52 = 40%. But the rise will start to decrease as we nuclearize and will down to zero long before 2200.
As far as nuclear power is concerned, this harkens back to an exchange between Ms. Kay and me in the Free-Lance Star in April 2019, after a commentary I wrote entitled “To reduce carbon dioxide, you have to go nuclear”. I’m heartened that she seems to agree with me were it not for the issue of disposal of nuclear waste. The good news is that the French, the runaway leader in nuclearization of their electricity supply with 80 percent of its output nuclear, have successfully recycled 95% of their waste into new fuel, with the remainder easily handled by vitrification and deep burial. And development is ongoing to burn the waste directly for fuel in molten salt reactors by an Anglo-Canadian company, Moltex, in Canada. The two obstacles to recycling our nuclear waste are regulatory, and the fact that virgin fuel is cheaper than recycled. That will change as increasing demand around the world from Sweden, Finland, UK, Russia, China and (we hope) the United States, will drive up the price of virgin fuel and make recycling profitable.
The second paragraph is simply incoherent. 100% of scientists believe that climate change is real, but only a minority believe that it is an existential crisis that must be dealt with immediately at the expense of throwing us into economic chaos, destroying the livelihoods and lives of just about everybody. Flat earthers and implanted microchips? Huh? Science-based consequences of climate change? Fewer homeowner policies? Citations please.
As far as attacking children, I most definitely did not and do not. I didn’t attend this particular event, but I had attended one a few years ago at Ms. Kay’s recommendation, and that was enough. I am disgusted by the indoctrination of children with climate nonsense giving them fear for the future—a big part of mental illness in children these days. The teenagers doing the indoctrination don’t know what they are talking about, and no doubt are acting in good faith, but the adults who have indoctrinated the teenagers are nothing but government propagandists (paid liars), of whom we now have a surfeit in the country. We also have appalling censorship of anyone doubting the prevailing narrative, whether in climate, COVID, health, endless overseas wars, runaway inflation, an out-of-control budget; the list goes on and on. Whatever it is, we have government censors and paid liars for all of them.
Bill Stewart