The Sept. 3 letter “Support clean energy to boost local jobs”’ letter quotes Great River Energy: “now is the time to regulate carbon emissions from the power sector.” Why? Because the EPA rules that we must address climate change by targeting greenhouse gas, (carbon dioxide) mainly by targeting coal fired power plants.

I’ve been subscribing to Science, Scientific American and Science News for a few years now, and have yet to see anything conclusive about man-made CO2 as the real cause for climate change. I see “maybe’s,” “possibilities,” and sometimes contradictions, but nothing really solid. We seem to be victims of a baseless “crisis.”

Picture all the gases in the atmosphere as a hundred story building; the CO2 made by man amounts to the thickness of the linoleum on the first floor. There simply is not enough infra red heat absorption capacity in our CO2 to significantly change anything. And this does not even take into account that the ocean and terrestrial areas contain 60 to 80 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere and act as a giant storage reservoir, releasing CO2 and then absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere at variable rates and locales, which we don’t even have a good handle on as to their quantity and placement. And then there is water vapor, which is about 95 percent of all the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Add up all these factors and you realize man’s CO2 contribution to the atmosphere for all practical purposes has no effect on climate.

 Phil Drietz

Delhi, Minnesota