President Obama speaks at the CEO Summit, attended by 800 business leaders from around the region representing U.S. and Asia-Pacific companies, in Manila, Philippines, Nov. 18, ahead of the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. (Susan Walsh, The Associated Press)
Re:“Can climate future be predicted?,” Nov. 21 letter to the editor.
Letter-writer David Roth expresses skepticism about the ability of climate scientists to predict the climate in 2050, since meteorologists have difficulty predicting the amount of snowfall from a winter storm. He wonders how future climate predictions can be any more accurate than local weather forecasts. The answer is relatively simple.
First, predicting the weather, particularly for Denver, is more complicated than predicting global climate change, as a result of regional impacts of the mountains and the potential for weather to come from many different directions.
Second, atmospheric scientists have been making predictions about climate change for more than two decades now, and their predictions have mostly been spot on, actually underestimating how much warming will occur.
Bill Bowman, Boulder
This letter was published in the Nov. 27 edition.If we cannot predict the moisture in every storm, how can we predict that the planet will continue to warm? The answer lies in the cumulative effect of carbon dioxide. Around Thanksgiving, add a very thin blanket to your bed and add another every night. Come the Ides of March, you will be very toasty indeed. So it is with cumulative carbon. Year after year and decade after decade, we add another thin blanket of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and there it remains. Stirred by the same turbulence that makes weather so difficult to predict, it covers the planet. Now the hard question is, will we continue to pile on the blankets?
Phil Nelson, Golden
This letter was published in the Nov. 27 edition.
Submit a letter to the editor via this form or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
