Want to Bet on Climate Change?
Forum writer Dick Tracy is still “skeptical” about the science and solutions to climate change. Actually, I don’t think Mr. Tracy cares a whit about the science; he dislikes any problems that require concerted action between nations to solve. He clothes his bias in pseudoscience, using one of the favorite denier lines about scientists in the ’70s predicting a new ice age. There was research about the levels of smog and other pollutants blocking sunlight and masking some of the effects of global warming. This was before the passage of the Clean Air Act. Even so, the vast majority of published research in that period was warning of the effects of warming. Mr. Tracy puts random quotes about impeding disasters in the same category as an entire body of research showing the temperature rising, the strong association with human activity, and the multitude of negative consequences that are even now beginning to occur. Here is a prediction for Mr. Tracy — I’ll wager $1,000 that 2016 will be the warmest year on record. You in?
Michael Hillinger
Etna