It was my pleasure to present “Climate Change: The New Urgency of Emission Reduction, and How to Make a Difference” at the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Auburn. In response to the article on the presentation published Feb. 7 in The Citizen, a number of readers wrote comments on the newspaper's Web site. Here I'll respond to some key points made by the readers.

“DD” wrote “Global warming is bunk. The earth goes through changes over decades.” Along a similar vein, Chris Van Note wrote “in the 1970s it was all about global cooling and a new ice age coming and now this.” Unfortunately, since the late 1970s the trend in average global surface temperature has been warming, not cooling. Of special concern is that the rise in temperature is accelerating, as can be seen from the data plotted in the graph on my non-profit Web site www.climatehealth.net.

“Mother Nature” wrote that “Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate.” However, it's universally accepted by scientists who study the climate that greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide are responsible for blanketing the Earth from the cold of space. During the talk, I showed slides that detailed the greenhouse effect and how our activities result in emissions that do very substantially increase the levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, increasing their retention of heat, warming the Earth.

“rd” asked “Will Dr. Johnson please explain why global warming happened in the past before there was so called Greenhouse effects?” Solar and orbital factors have contributed to the rise in temperature that brought the Earth out of the Ice Age to the climate that has allowed civilization to flourish. Those changes took place over many millennia. The present warming is accelerating so rapidly over decades, not millennia, that no known natural factors could be forcing it strongly enough. Therefore human activities must be contributing to it, especially since human-induced emissions have increased the levels of greenhouse gasses with similar rapidity.

Leon Kapowski wrote “global warming alarmists are in it for one thing, and one thing only ... the almighty dollar.” I'm retired from working on research and development in industry. I don't charge a speaker's fee for this voluntary community service. I operate the Web site at a loss (no pop-up ads on the site). I don't desire any income from this work.

My reward is the hope that the efforts of myself and those who are willing to listen, investigate the information on how to make a difference and act to support the transition to renewable energy sources and increase efficiency, result in a marginally more livable planet for the children than if we had ignored the several accelerating repercussions detailed in the slides. And a further reward is the hope that everyone's efforts result in a stronger, more energy independent U.S. Occasionally throughout history, a generation is faced with a crisis. It's up to us to expend personal effort and resources to make the transition and increase efficiency. For the children.

Sylvester Johnson

Johnson, Ph.D. Applied Physics, can be contacted through his Web site.

www.climatehealth.net