Letters to the Editor (Editorial Policies)
Posted on February 22, 2007

Clarifying climate change truths

In a recent letter, Nathaniel Clarkson cited several ideas that seem to refute or question the global consensus on human-caused climate change. Unfortunately, most of Clarkson’s information came from a dubious source: Dr. Timothy Ball, a Canadian climatologist.

A Google search for Ball will lead you to a plethora of sites denouncing his often inaccurate statements about climate change data, and other misleading proclamations he has made. For instance, Ball’s statement that “global temperatures have actually decreased slightly since 1998” is an outright fabrication.

Also, it is true that there were those that proposed the world might begin to cool in the 1970s, but in no way did those suggestions reach near the scientific level of review and consensus that climate change has.

Unfortunately, anthropogenic climate change is a very real phenomenon that has dire consequences for civilization, likely within our lifetimes. Besides loud and provocative individuals like Ball, the world’s scientific institutions, governmental bodies and even hundreds of corporations are in open agreement: the earth is heating, fast. CO2 and other greenhouse gas levels are increasing at alarming rates, and stand, by the year 2050, to reach higher than they have in at least 400,000 years.

Fortunately, action on CO2 levels also addresses many related issues such as air and water pollution, dependence on foreign oil, resource wars and environmental degradation. The time for adapting is now, and we each have to do our part.

Marley Green, sophomore anthropology major

‘Blackness’ is more than skin deep

Monday’s House Editorial on Barack Obama misses the mark on dialogues taking place in the different black communities in the United States, and please take note my pluralism of “communities.” Part of the problem rests in The Breeze’s limited understanding of “blackness” as merely a matter of heritage and color. “Blackness” is much more than this, as many African-Americans and other racialized and under-classed minorities will attest. The question in our minds is whether or not Obama can empathize and respond to this more complex construction of “blackness.”  It follows, then, that it is foolish to separate judgment of Obama’s being from his diversity, awareness, color, descent and politics, because it’s this very sense of being that makes him such a promising candidate in the minds of many Obama supporters.

Dr. Carlos Aleman, assistant communications professor