Letter - Weather thoughts to chew on

To the editor:

I had the good fortune last Thursday to hear Don Shelby, award-winning newsman and author of The Season Never Ends, relate a series of short stories about his long and successful life. And what a story it is. Born into a conservative Indiana family, he told how his frequent childhood task was straightening the nails his dad had salvaged from around the family homestead.

And then he got serious about his top priority today – the weather. Or more accurately, the climate. Here are a few of the facts he threw out for us to chew on:

• There were $500 billion in weather-related losses and more than $17 billion in the United States alone in 2011.

• The past 10 years were the hottest in the past 1,500 years.

• Ice core data shows the most CO2 (390 ppm) in the atmosphere in the last 600,000 years (incidentally, there were no humans around nor could there have been).

• Unprecedented confluence of droughts, floods, and heat waves throughout the U.S. and the world.

• More than 2,600 high temperature records broken in the U.S. this year.

Accompanied by climate scientist Dr. John Abraham, Don will be back with us on April 19 for appearances throughout the area starting at 9 a.m. on KXRA Radio 1490 AM and ending with the keynote address at the Ecofair at Discovery School at 6 p.m.

Jeanne Johnson

Minnesota 7th Congressional District, Citizen's Climate Lobby

Alexandria, MN

Tags: opinion, letters