DEAR EDITOR:
I enjoyed Bill Stafford's letter about climate change in the Friday Marietta Daily Journal. It made me smile. I certainly would hope that he is right and that the possible harmful effects of human-caused climate change are nothing to worry about, and that the whole idea of global warming and harmful climate change is just a liberal hoax and a scheme to exert even more control over every aspect of our lives. But I fear this may not be the case.

I certainly don't have the scientific background to evaluate or understand this whole global warming phenomenon in anything more than the most basic and elementary way. But from where I sit it appears as if there are multitudes of serious scientists and climatologists out there with no axe to grind or anything to gain saying that the threat of harmful, man-made, climate change is something to be taken very seriously.

I read the other day that two German ships sailed ice-free over the North Pole this past summer. This has evidently never been possible in historical times until now. Glaciers around the world are melting, the snow cap on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa seems to be disappearing, and the permafrost in Alaska is thawing. The long-term effects of these events and many others could be very harmful.

Whatever may or may not be happening to the earth's weather as a result of human activity will likely come to pass. It does not appear as if anything meaningful, the events in Copenhagen notwithstanding, will be done to curtail it.

Good luck to all of us. We may need it.

John B. Coffee
East Cobb