Rich letter: Climate change
Most of us were not surprised to hear that Dell Raybould, chair of the House Resources & Conservation Committee, gets his ideas about climate change from Rush Limbaugh (Depth, Jan. 1). Because I’m interested in both facts and opinions, I do listen to Rush from time to time. I’ll admit that he is occasionally funny, but he’s a blowhard, as widely appreciated by thinking people. Rush, Dell, and most of our legislators do not trouble themselves much with “facts” and “science.” It would only be sad if it weren’t such a profound abrogation of responsibility to the citizens of Idaho.
People only need to understand one trend in the data to appreciate that the climate change we are experiencing now is largely due to human activity. That trend is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Google it. We know what the past levels were because those gases are trapped in glacial ice, and we can sample and measure them. Carbon dioxide increases rapidly upon the industrial revolution when humans began pouring the gas into the air. Of course, carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas. How hard was that?
Terry Rich, Boise
This story was originally published January 10, 2016 at 11:21 PM with the headline "Rich letter: Climate change."