Letter: Science shows evidence of climate change
Tri-State Bites & Brews
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Jim Gieses recent column cited supposedly disproven doomsday predictions to ridicule climate science. Some were predictions of lone scientists. Others were broadly researched and mitigated by government action (banning freon to protect the ozone layer; limiting sulfur emissions to curtail acid rain).
Since the early 1800s, starting with French physicist Fourier, scientists have known that earths atmosphere traps heat from the sun. Understanding how that happens came over decades of research. In 1897, the Nobel Prize winning Danish chemist Arrhenius outlined how carbon dioxide has an outsized impact on heat retention. By the 1960s, some scientists were warning that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are being spewed into the atmosphere in amounts that will significantly warm our planet. The scientific community has gradually come to a consensus that this is happening and that the effects will be damaging.
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To protect profits, energy interests mounted a disinformation campaign. Richard Lindzer, a climate change denier whom Mr. Giese cites, was funded by interests like Peabody Coal and the Koch network. During the 1960s and 1970s, even as Exxon outwardly denied that the Earth was warming, it had internally validated the science and was researching the effects.
Anyone not a scientist can now simply read the news to find predicted effects of a warming planet that are coming to pass and will continue to worsen. Record forest fires, summer heat, rains, floods and drought; all there. Houses eroding into a rising ocean; same. The time of believable science denial is past.
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Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 5:30 am