From my perspective as an economic geologist, Mr. Riethmiller’s letter to the editor is misleading (“
There are mistakes in his use of incomplete facts and knowledge. Acid Rain is and was real. Sulfur dioxide and Nitrous oxides are major by-products produced by mining and refining of hydrocarbons, primarily coal and oil, and many other metals.
These two oxides when combined with rain and ocean waters change the Ph of lakes and ocean reefs reducing life. Lakes, world wide, became dead zones in the Americas.
It wasn’t until the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act (later amended it in 1972) that this act literally stopped the acidification of lakes in North America by scrubbing these two gases from smokestacks across the United States and Canada.
Comparing the Anthropocene with the Carboniferous, and stating that earth had more free CO2 may not be as simple as that described by Mr. Riethmiller. The rocks of the Carboniferous sequestered CO2 and extracted it from the atmosphere in the form of plants, huge coal sequences and thick limestones deposits.
When one compares the free gases of the two geologic periods, the free oxygen content was almost 35% during the Carboniferous as compared to less than 20% in today’s atmosphere. The Carboniferous supported land plants, multi-cell organisms, as limestones, and amphibians; not mammals.
Politicizing climate change is dangerous and misleading and it should remain in the realm of science even if it is unsettling.
George RichardsonDurango
