Re: (Gazette, July 19)

Yet again, Tom Fletcher is up to his usual tricks, bending definitions and statistics to lead readers down his B次元官网网址減ost truthB次元官网网址� path.

His column, B次元官网网址淗ype doesnB次元官网网址檛 help wildfire efforts,B次元官网网址� belittles Andrew Weaver and others for stating that climate change is a likely cause for some of the devastating wildfires blazing through B.C.B次元官网网址檚 interior. Fletcher claims we have just come off the B次元官网网址渃oldest winter in recorded history for much of B.C.,B次元官网网址� as some sort of proof that temperatures arenB次元官网网址檛 rising.

The cold snap we had this last winter was around the 17th coldest for Victoria in the last century, hardly the coldest in recorded history. Between 1908 and 1985, 16 winters had periods of weather lasting over six weeks which were colder than last winter. These occurred from one to 11 years apart, averaging 6.7 years. Last winter was the coldest in 31 years.

Fletcher continually mixes up weather and climate. Weather measures temperature, precipitation, and such, over periods of days, weeks, seasons, or even a few years. Climate, however, is an overall trend over numerous years, typically decades, centuries or millennia.

Just as one house selling for $21 million doesnB次元官网网址檛 tell us anything about the average sale price of a house, one outlier winter doesnB次元官网网址檛 alter overall climate trends.

I imagine Fletcher knows this, but it doesnB次元官网网址檛 fit into his political agenda of bashing environmentalists, protesters, the NDP and Green parties, or anyone who wants to lessen our carbon footprint.

I suspect Fletcher also knows that mountain pine beetle kill forests, which he refers to as a cause for increased acreage loss from these fires, was also likely due to climate change. Overall warmer winters allow the beetlesB次元官网网址� eggs to survive in higher numbers, especially within a planted monoculture forest already under stress from climate change conditions.

Arthur Entlich

Metchosin