Nelson Otto
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
Mr. Prenger please do not confuse weather events with climate change. Hurricanes, flood, famine, forest fires have been going on for centuries and note these things are not getting worse. Since 1950 forest fires have decreased globally by 15 percent. "Estimates show that even with global warming, the level of wildfires will continue to decline unit mid-century and won't resume to the level of 1950, the worse for fires," according to proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The fires burning homes are not due to climate change, but do to 40 years of public forest mismanagement caused by environmentalists and the non-use movement. Rep. Tom McClintock pointed out the obvious: "The same climate change impacts private lands as public lands, but private forests are not burning down because they are properly managed."
According to a study in Nature March 2014 shows little change in droughts in the past 60 years. Global hurricane activity measured by total energy haven't been this low since the 1970s. Today measured by deaths do extreme weather events have been dropping, that is according to an Oxford University database for death rates from floods, extreme temperatures droughts, and storms. The average death rate from last century declined by 97 percent. These are facts by scientists, so don't panic Mr. Prenger, the world isn't ending. There are cheaper and better ways to deal with the weather events then a carbon tax. A tax dividend that will do nothing to change the weather is worthless.