Did the T-R Editorial Board drink Kool Aid before publishing the Dec. 16 article connecting global warming with the July 19 tornado? Individual weather events have been totally discounted as being a result of global warming. This is even admitted by global warming fear mongers.

There are some who claim that hurricanes are more intense, fires more frequent, tornados more violent and on and one, ad infinitum. Poppycock. Forest fires, with which I am well versed through a 37-year forestry career, are probably fewer and burn less acreage than nearly 200 years ago when western states were settled. Forest fires peaked in the 1950s. Granted, more dollar damage is being done because people build their homes in forests — forests that burned regularly over the past 1,000 years.

CO2 is certainly not a major cause of warming. The warming effect of clouds and water vapor is 20 times greater than CO2 simply due to the relative abundance of each. CO2 is the elixir of life. It is responsible for the greening of earth over the past 50 years, evidenced by satellite photos. Ice cores show that levels of CO2 were considerably higher than present well prior to the burning of fossil fuels.

Earth is in an interglacial warm period. There are five previous interglacial warm periods that were warmer than present. These were followed by glaciations, the last of which left tracks in limestone north of Le Grand and then melted 10,000 years ago. Dr. Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center recently stated, “The current lack of solar activity could bring record cold in as little as a few months.” The odds of an upcoming ice age are far greater than odds of continued warming.