By Phyllis Chesler

Dear Readers:

I've just asked a major scientist and a physician about climate change. The answers were that the phenomenon is all too real; that we can never attribute a particular event, such as the tragic Los Angeles fire, as having been caused by "global warming;" It is a fact that carbon emissions have raised the earth's temperature and have thus, increased the possibilities of disastrous "natural" events happening more rapidly than ever before. When the volcano in Iceland errupted it lowered temperatures--do we want to manipulate such eruptions? Scientists are working ways to slow down the apparently escalating pace of wind-driven fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, etc. But, doomsayers aside, it is not too late to turn the tide, so to speak.

A very informed and rather passionate environmentalist reader of mine asked me to "expand my mind" and to read the critiques of Drs. Lindzen et al--and then she sent me five sites to visit. She was afraid that if I doubted the reality of climate change it might render my other work "suspect." I thanked her.

I am not a scientist and I do not have the time or the scientific knowledge to educate myself sufficiently on this issue. However, I stand corrected. Carbon emissions have warmed the planet. The highest offender by far is China. America is next. Electric cars--for short distances; sure. But how do scientists solve the fires created when their lithium batteries explode due to flooding or to something else. Please don't ask me. But my mind is more open to the science involved in the Great Debate.