In your recent front page article on coal (“City hopes to move Xcel off coal,” Daily Camera, July 24), I am sure you did not mean to imply that the gases shown escaping the stack in the accompanying photo were CO2 rather than water vapor. You, of course, know that water vapor makes up more than 95 percent of our greenhouses gases. I am also sure when writing about climate change you know that climate change is not new but has been going on since this earth was first formed. Yes, CO2 levels have been increasing recently which is partly the result of population growth because all humans and the creatures we eat breathe out CO2. Our population growth has been seven-fold in the last 200 years. By the way, CO2 levels and temperatures have been higher in the Inter Ice Age periods, when there were no people, than they are today.

Then I am sure you are concerned that subsidized but still expensive, NIMBY, “clean” wind power gets a waver on killing birds, bats and eagles (illegal) while sucking energy out of our climate system that controls our weather and turns that energy into heat. Then we have that great solar power that absorbs energy instead of reflecting it and turns into electricity that helps light our world up at night. Look at those wonderful space pictures of our country all gleaming at night.

I’m afraid the simple facts still apply, you do not get something (energy) for nothing. You do not create or destroy energy, you just change its form. There is always a cost. The world is just overpopulated. A lack of sufficient water may help correct that problem.

Hugh W. Evans

Boulder