"MY qualifications are greater than yours…."

In what areas, BB?

I've been following the global warming thing since the 1950s with the observations of Jacques Cousteau and books by such people as Rachel Carson, who was one of the first to call attention to the effect that human activity was having on the oceans and the atmosphere. And your assumption that concern about climate change all started with Al Gore's Earth in the Balance displays an actual lack of knowledge on your part. People have been concerned about what human caused pollution is doing to the planet long before Gore's book.

In the very early 1960s, I knew Jerry Pournelle quite well. Jerry is probably best known as a writer of science fiction, but (to forestall anybody doing a riff on his being "only" a science fiction writer) he has advanced degrees in a couple of scientific areas, has worked in the space program when he was with the Boeing Space Center, and although he and I didn't agree politically (he's quite conservative), I learned a lot of facts from him and we had many enlightening conversations on many subjects. By the way, he was one of Ronald Reagan's science advisers and played a major part in the development of the "Star Wars" project—no, not the movies!—SDI.

Jerry once said, about the profligate use of fossil fuels, "When it's gone, it's gone! When you consider the number of really essential products that are made from petroleum—from plastics to fertilizers to pharmaceuticals (and he enumerated many more)—you realize that to use up the limited supply of petroleum by burning it to produce energy is a crime against future generations!" Then he went on to describe several relatively easy and inexpensive methods of propelling automobiles and producing electricity that don't involve the burning of fossil fuels or the polluting of the atmosphere.

In addition to having an encyclopedic mind for scientific facts and theories, he had a vivid imagination, which served him well both in writing some really fine science fiction and in hatching up alternative ways of doing things.

He was a Southerner, born and raised in Louisiana, which, despite his prodigious knowledge, may explain his political conservatism. He and Newt Gingrich became good friends, which really puzzles me, but that's another question.

In any case, that much of the current climate change is human caused is considered to be an incontrovertible fact by the overwhelming majority of competent scientists. Political considerations notwithstanding.

Don Firth