With Utah's biggest forest fire in history and a consequent sky full of soot, we are witnessing a small scale enactment of the nuclear winter scenario which was so widely accepted as gospel doctrine 20 years ago by pacifist and scientist alike. It will be interesting to see if the temperature along the Wasatch front really drops, if at all. As Michael Crichton has nicely pointed out, the science behind greenhouse warming is as anecdotal and unempirical as that underlying the old nuclear winter scare -- the whole world has been duped once again.

Crichton also treats the population prognosis. The truth is, from an environmental perspective, overpopulation was a critical problem in North America 10,000 years ago when dozens of species of megafauna went extinct about the same time humans arrived with mesolithic technology.

So yes, by some criteria there may be too many people, as there have been for millenia, but at least the population has reached a critical mass that was able to produce the technology and science that would give birth to an awareness of its supposedly superfluous existence.

Butch Foster,

Taylorsville

A.G. Foster, Jr.,

West Jordon