Dear Gramps,!
Is global warming a real threat to our future on this planet?  That doesn’t seem to jibe with scriptures, but perhaps I have misinterpreted them.  I love the earth and want to care for it the best way I can.  But I’ve already had nine children, several of whom have had children.  Should I feel guilty?  I felt as though I was obeying the commandments.  Are those who say that we all need to pay money to “green” organizations to “erase our carbon footprints” right? Would it be proper to never drink out of a plastic bottle again or to change all my light bulbs to the newer more earth friendly type?  Should I take fewer showers?  Not buy plastic at all?  Not use paper plate?  They I’ll use water and heat to wash my ceramic dishes. I understand that the earth lives and will die and be resurrected.   What can I do?
Bette,  Nashville, Tennessee

Dear Bette,
You have addressed a highly politicized subject. Actually, the jury is still out on the causes of global warming, and the effects of “greenhouse gases” on the environment, and the fixes that have been proposed. Global warming and cooling are cyclical processes that have happened many times in the past, in the complete absence of man-made contamination of the atmosphere. In the recent geologic past, ice ages have occurred between every 40,000 to 100,000 years. The most recent ice age ended about 11,000 years ago. The Great Lakes were scooped out by the advance of the latest ice age. Between those ice ages there have been global warming episodes that caused the ice layers to retreat toward the polar regions. And there have been minor ice ages since then. The winter defeat of Napoleon’s army in Russia in 1790 was caused specifically by an extremely ferocious winter. The winter that we have just experienced has been one of record cold and snowfalls. The four major agencies tracking Earth’s temperature, including NASA’s Goddard Institute, report the earth cooled 0.7C in 2007, the fastest decline in the age of instrumentation, putting us back to where the Earth was in 1930. It snowed this year in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, and the extent of Antarctic sea ice was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered Antarctica in 1770s.
The 11-year sunspot cycle also has a major effect on the earth’s weather. During the present cycle there has been a virtual dearth of sun spots–only three recorded so far. Scientists report that if this trend of low sun-spot activity remains for another year or two, it may indicate another repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere. So we are in more danger of global cooling than of global warming.

Concerning your more earth friendly type of light bulbs, did you know that the new compact flourescent light bulbs each contain enough mercury to contaminate 6000 gallons of water beyond safe drinking limits? Be sure that you don’t break one.

Gramps
Gramps