EDITOR’S NOTE: Terry Parks is a 1966 graduate of Wayland High School, He is a former pastor, entrepreneur and inventor who several years ago returned to live in his hometown.
by Terry Parks
First I want to commend David Young for being a fair minded journalist and editorialist who may not agree with all that’s written, or even any of it, and yet provides such diverse columnists and commentary on Townbroadcast. Bravo.
I agree with much of what was written by Ranger Rick in his most recent column, but not because I am of any political stripe. I am one of those who is saying “a pox on both of your houses.” I have to be an independent thinker who is interested in the truth alone, regardless of where it may reside, or whether or not it confirms my own preferences.
That shouldn’t say anything except that such an approach should be normal. However, such a “neutral truth” kind of normal is in much shorter supply lately.
One of my inventions cuts the “greenhouse gas” CO2 and fossil fuel use significantly, so I have some financial reasons for riding the popular human-caused climate change train. But I don’t and can’t. The truth is not the friend of that politically-correct view.
As RR states, climate change, even in severe trends, has always occurred and will continue to occur with or without humans. It happens on planets that have no population. In the mid 1800’s was the most recent “little ice age.” Check it out. It was hot and crops got destroyed in the 1930s dust bowl period. Have we seen a dust bowl recently with all of this recent “climate change”?
There was a time when it was so warm on earth that things grew to tremendous sizes, such as dragonflies with over three-foot wingspans.
The bottom line is, take a very good look at the long-era charts of the history of climate change and see if you are impressed with what some are becoming so exercised over today while making lots of money doing so and gaining political power and friends in the process. It’s apparently getting so hot that their hair is now on fire and they are wanting everyone to change their lifestyles, priorities and finances to suit them.
Don’t buy into it and play their foolish game. Get the big picture in mind. Even if climate warms, that can be a good thing in the main. Warming has been a good thing in general throughout all of history. But to say that human activity is the cause of any warming occurring this time around is inflating our tiny effect on a very big independent climate force field that has been steadily at work and radically changing the temperatures and climate for a lot longer than we’ve been here to see
Mr. Parks,
Great column, welcome to the Town Broadcast.
Thank you. Being a guest “columnist” was a pleasure but a surprise to me. I appreciate the opportunity to voice this view, which I know many hold but do not often get the platform to express. Those with the ear of the media get most of the opportunity to let their views and agenda be known. So it looks like it is the overwhelming truth. But it isn’t.
Mr. Parks,
Thanks for another point of view, a view which I’m sure many won’t agree with, because they believe the hysteria.
Anybody that can palm a basketball in both hands with arms straight out (maybe with the help of “stick um”?) is a person with a perverse sense of humor with whom I can identify.
I don’t know who is behind your moniker, but I’m going to guess we may have been at WHS together all those many years ago. If not, I’m just a bad guesser. In any case thanks for commenting, including the cryptic notation. Speaking of guessing, when it comes to the climate change debate we can’t afford as public policy to do that. As with all science we must ask ourselves if the evidence is absolutely demonstrable and lines up consistently with all known facts. That’s not the case with the politically-correct climate change view and agenda. We know, for instance, that CO2 is plant food, pumped into greenhouses to make things grow better. But to hear the climate change alarmists message there can be no good result from ambient CO2 and CO2 is a deadly poison in our atmosphere that will soon doom us all if we don’t curb it asap, even if no other huge population countries like China and India do. Logic is thus sorely missing.
I have one small bone to pick with regard to your column (which was interesting and worth fact-checking).
The reason we have not had another Dust Bowl is that we no longer allow or encourage wholesale displacement of prairie grasses and their root systems. The early land rushes and settlement of the west created a perfect storm, if you will, of rapid settlement and faulty agricultural practices in order to get people on the land and producing crops. Yes, a severe drought occurred simultaneously, as have other severe droughts before it, but the interference of man with the land exacerbated the drought and allowed for the never-before-seen airborne erosion of topsoil from the better parts of several western states. Following the Dust Bowl, agricultural experts convened in Washington and elsewhere to establish farming practices and interventions to attempt to repair that damage done during the Dust Bowl. “Hedge row” type planting of trees were undertaken to provide natural windbreaks, while prairie grasses were reintroduced to hold in place what soil remained. It took decades to achieve some degree of reclamation. You are correct that fluctuations in weather and climate do occur over the centuries, and a daily record keeping only goes back so far. Otherwise we have only geologic records to give us evidence of those changes. But history of the Dust Bowl will confirm that the severity of that event was, indeed, manmade. You can look it up.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. It is true as you say that land practices can make a major difference in weather events such as the amount of dust in a dust storm. However, most of those same farms and crude land practices were there and in place a very long time before the Dust Bowl, but yet no Dust Bowl. The summer weather in the 1930’s was exceptionally hot everywhere throughout the U.S. The east coast set records. You’ll agree I’m sure that the ocean water temperatures were affected upward back then just as land was. I’m confident that had the same man-made climate change advocates been in place politically back then the exceptionally hot weather in the 1930’s would have been blamed on human causes. Then later in the 70’s there were “scientific” concerns about a new ice age on the horizon. True science isn’t political and doesn’t have an agenda. But many “scientists” and others touting their views do. Truth is consistent on the facts. You can’t take temperature data from one or even a few decades and make accurate predictions about causes and long-term effects. If that could be done by human beings then how is it that “scientists” who can put men on the moon have virtually never been correct throughout modern history regarding significant variations in weather, climate and weather-related events? The widespread use of fossil fuels has been around for a long time now. Why didn’t these brilliant now-trusted “scientists” pick up on human-caused climate change back in the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s before that view became so popular within the last 20 years? I’ll trust the big picture before i would trust anyone on this subject who refuses to pay attention to that very long big picture of climate in order to promote their own fad theories. I welcome your further thoughts. Thanks.