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Explanations given to global warming questions

I am not a $400-an-hour researcher, but I’m more than happy to answer some of the global warming questions of a writer to this newspaper (Letters, Jan. 4).

He asked why increased warming doesn’t result in an increase in evaporation of the ocean becoming rain and snow. It does.

He also wanted to know if this hasn’t been the natural balance since day one. What the writer apparently does not understand is that climate and weather are dynamic phenomena.

With enhanced global warming caused by increased human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the timing and location of rain and snow often change, creating new weather patterns, including drought in some locations and increased flooding and other extreme weather in others.

This is exactly why many climate scientists have linked recent tropical cyclones and hurricanes such as Harvey and Maria to global warming and climate change.

Far from preserving the natural balance as the writer suggested, it upsets that balance in increasingly hazardous and dangerous ways.

Just ask the good people of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands who are still recovering.

Barry Solomon

Waikapu

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