April 24, 2014
Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
3511 NW 91st Street
Miami, FL 33172

RE: “Baby it’s wet outside” – some comments on your typical modern American Liberal “The sky is falling” editorial about the horror, the horror, of the ocean rising. It is a screed that thumbs its nose at 25 centuries of Western Civilization. [Stuff like Logic, reasoned discourse, and the scientific method, things like that, don’t you know?]

Sirs,

Every time we proclaim that “the science is settled” it goes and “unsettles” itself. Indeed, it is a new definition of hubris.

If you don’t believe me ask Ptolemy.

His version of the earth and the sun and the planets and the stars was etched in stone for more than a millennium

Honest. You could look it up.

My 1970 copy of “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich, Ph. D, a regular on the Johnny Carson show, said that not only was the “science settled” but the future of mankind was “settled”.

The race was on. The finish line, the one with the flashing sign that said “Will the last person living please turn off the lights”, was the year 2000. The only thing “unsettled” was whether we would starve to death or freeze to death.

Honest. You could look it up.

[I add, somewhat sheepishly for fear of being labeled a knuckle dragger, that it is 2014 and I am still somewhat calorically challenged. Professor Ehrlich’s admonition not to buy any green bananas was safely ignored. Some legatees of DWEMs have all the luck.]

I have lived less than 15 yards from the Intercostal for 12 years.

Why hasn’t the water risen here?

Perhaps you are confused by the tides’ waxings and wanings. Plus, the moon has something to do with it also. Please consult with Professor Vivaldi, the noted Italian climatologist. He will explain all.



Perhaps the ocean is rising in Miami but not in Fort Lauderdale. For that to happen a lot of science would have to become “unsettled”.

Maybe it’s time to give Ptolemy, like the Keystone pipeline, another look. Maybe not.






Kevin Smith