Dear Sir,
I feel compelled to take umbrage with the article in the February 20, 2014 Wanderer article “Getting a Taste of World Hunger.” The general theme of the article is that world hunger is caused by “Companies and governments”and that “exacerbating the problem is climate change which has dramatically increased throughout the planet.”
Governments, which ultimately control the banks, have a direct effect on the distribution of funds related to the sustenance of the populations of countries; however, companies are there to provide a product and are at the mercy of the governments therein. This is not my real concern. What I’m worried about is the fact that the idea of “Global Warming” and the new term of “Climate Change” are so tacitly accepted and taught to our 7th graders as this is the end of the discussion on this hotly debated subject. The premise is that the “science is complete.” “No more discussion.” “The world is flat and you’ll sail off the end of it if you go west, Mr. Christopher Columbus.” “Disregard the calculations of that Copernicus fellow and his heliocentric model of the universe. We all know that the world is flat.”
Climate change is nothing but a model. Einstein’s theories are nothing but models, and even he understood that. How can we base our whole thought process and our actions on a model that takes only data from a few hundred years and extrapolate it in this way?
There is no argument that drought, flood, storms and other acts of nature are significant contributors to famine, but as to whether or not climate change is a function of man or not still needs to be addressed. The students are told to accept that idea. Shouldn’t they be taught how to think and not what to think?
For the past seventeen years, there has been no exponential increase in the average world temperature, and if we were to believe the prognosticators of twenty years ago, Mattapoisett would be well out to sea and the polar ice caps wouldn’t have increased in the magnitude that they have recently. Polar bears would have had to develop gills because they would be swimming all the time. We’re told now that the “polar vortex” which has descended is further proof of the coming of the “end of the world due to climate change.” I can remember in the early 1980s when Buzzards Bay was frozen solid from New Bedford to Woods Hole, and there was no explanation of Global Warming but rather that a New Ice Age was coming. Do you think that someone might have an agenda for raising new “revenues” through taxation? Someone has to pay for it. Let’s make the tax payers think that they’re responsible, and we’ll hit them with a “CARBON TAX.” We are the ones who control the universe. We can change Mother Nature.
Enough of this cynicism. It’s time to listen to the debate. It’s time to see all sides. It’s time to understand that learning how to think is the most important thing and that you must investigate on your own. ”Do your homework” is what is required here.
Respectfully yours,
Paul E. Osenkowski, Mattapoisett
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