The many pieces you’ve recently printed on climate change make it clear how different perspectives are about our new reality. Well-meaning, informed people heatedly disagree, supporting their beliefs with disparate facts pulled from dissimilar sources. Finding and discarding the propaganda and evaluating the proposals is so exhausting it’s tempting to give up on understanding despite how much is at stake.
So what do we do? We need to assess whether those people who offer their opinions in public have done their homework, including whether they form their beliefs from reputable, expert sources and are as free of self-interest and organizational bias as humanly possible. This is particularly true of public officials, who have the power to act on their beliefs, impacting all our lives.
That is why I support Ellen Beraud for 5th District county supervisor. Ellen is an independent thinker who seeks expert opinions and reputable research before taking a position. She is not financially or ideologically beholden to people or organizations that put their self-interest above concern for SLO County residents. And her deep experience in Atascadero government means she knows how to work with people of all opinions and backgrounds to meet common goals. She does her homework. I trust her—so can you.
Linda Baker
Atascadero
This article appears in Autumn Arts Annual 2019.
Dear Ms. Baker:
You are so right about public officials having the ability to impact all our lives. And that is why you need to slow down and not get any more emotionally involved in climate change. I believe you and Ms. Beraud and many in the current Progressive movement have been deluded with all the false narrative about the alleged climate catastrophe. Just two days ago, 16 yr. old Greta Thunberg from Sweden addressed the United States House of Representatives imploring them to act now. But, within a day, a letter from a group of 500 climatologists was presented to the United Nations in hopes that intelligent reason would return and displace the emotion-filled rhetoric consuming so many especially young minds today. Please read the following article from: Principia Scientific International, legally registered in the UK, incorporated for charitable purposes. It is a Community Interest Company overseen and regulated by Companies House.
500 Scientists to UN: There is NO Climate Emergency
Published on September 24, 2019 Written by Thomas D. Willams, PhD
More than 500 scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have sent a European Climate Declaration to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking for a long-overdue, high-level, open debate on climate change. Just as 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York accusing world leaders of robbing her of her future, scientists were begging the United Nations to keep hysteria from obscuring facts.
Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific, the declaration states.
Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.
The scientists underscored the importance of not rushing into enormously expensive climate action before fully ascertaining the facts. There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent, they declared. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rain forests.
The signatories of the declaration also insist that public policy must respect scientific and economic realities and not just reflect the most fashionable frenzy of the day.
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm, they note. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050.
If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world, they state. In particular, the scientists criticize the general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is currently founded as unfit for their purpose.
Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models, they propose. Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.
We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation, they declare.
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To sum up, Ms. Baker, I respectfully ask you to consider the science, and remember our youth are very susceptible to the emotional hype about the imminent end of the world. I, for one, do not want to see my grandchildren over the next ten years making plans to give up eating to try and save a friend or a pet or another family member “in her or his last days before the world
With all due respect, Mr. Mullen, it appears abundantly clear that Ms. Baker has considered the science, and also understands how many of the youth in our world, have a more intelligent understanding of the crisis that faces this planet– not as you ignorantly state, “the emotional hype about the imminent end of the world.”
I absolutely oppose your position in disagreeing with climatologists/scientists, who have provided well-documented, scientific data, declaring the need for immediate action to be taken to halt the effects of global warming.
Thank goodness, the majority of reasonably thinking individuals, do not agree with your comments.
Yes Ms. Baker, we do have a Difference of Opinion. You say that Ms. Beraud is not beholding to any financial or ideological groups but her largest campaign donations came from the Marijuana industry. She criticizes the north county groundwater management while having only attended a couple water meetings and then only associated with those individuals that have been working so hard to take the water rights away from the north county residents. I dont see that as being concerned for the welfare of the residents. Her political experience has been riddled with Adam Hill type behavior. Do we really need another Adam Hill on the County Board of Supervisors? She pushed for the creek setback ordinance that would have strip property rights for Atascadero landowners. She did her best to prevent the construction of the Veterans Memorial and complained about feeling intimidated by seeing people in uniform around her. Those are the very people that gave her the freedom that she has. Like most Progressives, Ellen is very good at claiming to posses the very qualities that her opponent actually demonstrates on a daily basis and then accuses her opponent of activities that she has participated in herself. You may trust Ms. Beraud but I DO NOT.