EDITOR:

What a wonderful [column] by Mark Maguire in the Sept. 5 Neighbor, “Re-discovering the joy of weather.” He has a greater appreciation of God-given marvels of living on this planet due to a daily variety of experiences. How boring if the planet didn’t rotate and we lived in perpetuity with continuous, cloudless daylight at 78 degrees.

For 2012, much attention is given to bad weather events of summer heat wave, summer drought, tornadoes, Hurricane Isaac and record sea ice melting in the Arctic Circle. All events are blamed on global warming caused by carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. Increased carbon dioxide is traced from Word War II to the present. So weather events prior to 1940 are due to natural causes and not using fossil fuels.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration compiles weather data for the past 120 years, and this data shows more record high temperatures before WWII, droughts worse before WWII, tornadoes lowest on record, Hurricane Isaac the first to strike the U.S. since 2005’s Katrina, and sea ice melting greater in 1922.

So all 2012 events were repeated in earlier times, there is no cause for alarm and enjoy the variety of weather bestowed upon us. I have concerns about children in grades K-12 being taught burning fossil fuels is causing catastrophic climate events and they have a dismal future. This lack of optimism for the future may cause pessimism for our younger generations and behavior problems and possible suicide.

James Rust

Buckhead resident and retired Georgia Tech nuclear engineering professor