LTE: Climate change is real

In an Op-Ed in the December 29 Gettysburg Times Bob Stilwell wrongly asserted that there is debate within the scientific community about human-caused climate change when in fact there is no such debate, and no doubts among actual climate researchers (scientists who actually publish their research findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals) that our burning of fossil fuels is warming the atmosphere and altering the climate. He advances a whole panoply of false experts (including himself), fallacies in the logic, cherry-picking of data, and misinformation to support this view.  

It would require too many words to debunk all his false or misleading claims, so I will just focus on one: the claim that the Earth was much hotter millions of years ago, and that past and current climate changes were and are currently driven largely by variations in the Earth’s orbit and solar variability. What is different now is the rapidity of the change; past climate changes took place over geologic and/or cosmic timescales (tens of thousands of years), timescales long compared to biological evolution timescales, so species had time to adapt by evolutionary change. The current era of warming is happening at a much faster rate — decades instead of millennia.  

In addition, do not be misled about a 2-degrees-Centigrade increase in the average temperature being only a “small fluctuation” which it would be safe to ignore. This change in the average temperature means about a 10% increase in the heat energy content of the atmosphere, and, more importantly, a 10% increase in the pressure gradient that drives storms. This is more than enough warming to cause great damage to our lives and livelihoods. And it is more relevant to our future than Stilwell’s preposterous and irrelevant claim that increased CO2 in the atmosphere is good for plants, or the insulting insinuation that those of us advocating for action to confront the threat posed by a rapidly warming planet are just shills for the manufacturers of wind turbines and solar panels. 

Instead of debating the science of human-caused climate change it would be much better for all of us to come together to figure out how best to transition away from fossil fuels with minimum cost and damage to the world economy, and how best to protect workers (like coal miners) who stand to lose their jobs in this transition.