To the editor:

I have no runny eyes or sneezing at a friend’s house who has cats — I still might be allergic, but there is a good chance I am not. A child eats peanut butter also with no reaction — she still might be allergic, but chances are she is not. I get headaches after eating at the local fast food joint every time — it might not be something in the food, but good chance it is. If you drink milk and then have to run to the bathroom with cramps, it might not be a reaction to the milk, but probably is. None of these scenarios require a endocrinologist or immunologist. Sometimes simple cause-and-effect is the correct answer (sometimes!).

The world is warming. This is irrefutable. The question “is human activity causing the globe to warming” rages, but there is no way to prove it unless we sharply reduce human emission activity and see what happens. COVID shut down world, flights/trucking/factories/economic activity. So much so whole industrialized economies were crushed. Now, looking at the data points for CO2, Methane and global warming during that one to two year period. They have not changed their upward slope. Google it. The needle has not moved a bit despite massive reduction in human emissions.

Russia is the largest nation on earth. Sixty-five percent of it is in frozen permafrost (just like your freezer). Scientists estimate that permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere (Russia and Canada, but mostly Russia) contains about 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, about twice as much as is currently in the atmosphere, or about three times as much as in all of the trees and plants on earth. If the power goes out in your freezer and the food spoils, you will smell the methane. If the permafrost melts, the same will happen, on a global scale.

We worry about plastic bags in the supermarket, drinking straws in landfills, and “carbon-neutrality” when the data might suggest there is a much bigger driving force. In the past there was no way to show human impact on global warming, we now have the data. If we look at science and not assumptions, we might find solutions.

Just a thought.

Ira Weinberg

Saranac Lake