I read with interest Michael Puchany's letter praising Al Gore's message regarding global warming as "The power of truth!" I respectfully offer my observation:
The scenario is as follows: The glaciers in the Austrian Alps have receded, affording the farmers additional grazing land. French wine makers are bemoaning the competition from Northern England, where the weather has been so balmy that English wine making is flourishing. Greenland is now denuded of ice, and Swedish farmers have settled there in great numbers, bringing their sheep to feast on this now verdant land. The entire world has warmed up. Al Gore's prediction come true?
Guess again: The year is about 700 A.D., and the world has been warming up without the benefit of automobiles, coal-burning power plants or the profuse use of oil, and the world is enjoying an abundance of food. But around 1300 A.D., things drastically cooled off. The ice returned and food production dipped to crisis proportions. Starvation was widespread. By the late 1800s, the Thames had frozen over and people in Manhattan could walk across the ice to Staten Island.
The real fact is that this cyclic behavior has gone on for thousands of years without human intervention. I truly believe that the current "Green Movement" is a vast fraud. And I am among millions who share this observation.
Richard L. Barnes
Lawrence