While listening to Henryck Gorecki’s “Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs,” I recalled a lecture given many years ago by a renowned scientist concerning the then-upcoming 21st century. He calmly laid out what amounted to the pell mell onrush of the Four Horsemen, and predicted, unless we changed our ways, a date of about 2045 when the first three — War, Pestilence and Famine — would essentially extinguish the human race. (I’ve never understood why the fourth Horseman is known simply as Death. That’s just a plain old inevitability).

I don’t believe climate change was even mentioned during that lecture, but we can see it driving those horsemen along their way. So I was gratified that Peter Sirois reminded us, as I and others have, that it is unfortunate that the term “global warming,” though accurate, became the label for the increasing climate change we are experiencing.

At the global scale, there is indeed incremental warming, but its result is extreme contrasts of weather — both hot and cold. Many are deliberately trying to misinform us. Can they look their kids in the eyes?

It may be too late to reverse entirely the effects we are already experiencing. But I suppose if people are having fun this winter, enjoy a good drought and are looking forward to Judgment Day, they can sit back and relax. But if they care about this world and what their kids will inherit, then they need to read up and speak out. There are many fine writers whose investigations are telling, to say nothing of bone-chilling.

It’s a daunting challenge — to change radically the way we live. But here’s a dire assertion I came across that must be considered: ” Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause unless we deal with climate change.”

Abbott Meader, Oakland

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