To the Editor,
Re: Science loses ground to superstition, B.C. Views, Oct. 3.
Tom Fletcher is, in my view, one of B.C.’s most under-appreciated commentators. This column sums up one of our world’s strangest phenomena —superstition increases in lockstep with the increase in human knowledge.
Fletcher focuses on our endless climate-change conflict, but you can add debates such as ‘smart meters causing cancer,’ ‘vaccines causing autism,’ ‘genetic engineering bad/organic good’ and on and on. Toss in the anti-coal and anti-pipeline crowd, and you have a mass of ignorance that boggles the mind.
Never have so many known so little about basic mathematics, physics, chemistry, history and so forth.
To illustrate my point, consider that the Earth’s atmosphere is 77 per cent nitrogen and 21 per cent oxygen. That leaves two per cent for all the trace gases including carbon dioxide – currently .04 of one per cent. How can a reasonable person argue that carbon dioxide is the primary driver of climate change?
Fletcher also notes the genetic engineering (GE) debate at the UBCM convention. GE offers some of the best solutions to hunger. In spite of the potential benefits, nearly half of our municipal leaders buy into the anti-GE hysteria.
Francis P. Jordan,
White Rock