We should listen to the scientific consensus

By Letter to the Editor on October 2, 2019.

Re: “Child abuse in the name of climate change,” Sept. 28

The recent guest column featured a statement that requires correction.

In part it reads, “…most weather and climate scientists do not accept the current narrative being expounded by our left-wing politicians and our media.”

This is a falsehood, the facts are clearly different as anyone can find out for themselves. Left-wing politicians and the media are not raising the alarm, our scientists are. The National Academy of Sciences, the NOAA, CMOS, the American Meterological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, even the American Assocation of Petroleum Geologists concede the IPCC evidence is compelling, this is a fact, not what he said. I am not sure who the writer is referring to in his opinion piece, clearly not the scientists on this planet. There is not one association of scientists that disagree with the IPCC and their conclusions in regards to the cause of global warming. Science isn’t dogma, things accepted today could lose favour tomorrow, that isn’t logic, reason, emotion or argument, it is science. The best theory is always a theory and at any moment could be replaced by a better theory. Replacing imperfect theories with theories that have fewer imperfections is the work of science. Science is not opinion. If you have an “opinion” you should at least take the time to learn the elementary and readily accessible “facts” that bear upon the matter. The science of human caused climate change is clear and compelling but the consensus regarding that science is a “fact,” plain and simple, go look.

Today if you want to know, you can, there is no reason to remain in the dark. There are very real perils which our planet, and hence we, are subject to. We cannot do anything about coronal mass ejections or meteor strikes but some things are in our control. There are real tragedies around the corner for everyone on this planet if we don’t act on what we have already seen and what we already know (ie. Larsen-B). The rest of the “opinion” piece read like some paranoid, illuminati fearing, conspiracy theory, I am amazed that someone who wrote that piece refers to anyone else as a “loon” because I can spot the loon.

The fossil fuel era is going to end, and soon, relatively speaking. Disinformation also comes to end, is there anyone who doesn’t accept that tobacco causes cancer, anyone? Today oil companies are doing just as the tobacco companies did 50 years ago, spending a lot of money funding disinformation campaigns. Corporations fund disinformation because unlike people many of them seem to have no moral compass and are driven only by profit, remember the Pinto (or more recently Volkswagen). People the world over should be proud that Ms. Thunberg is insisting on being heard and is actually saying what needs to be said, to wit “How dare we?.”

We have exactly one planet, we really should listen to the scientific consensus on climate change and start paying attention to the possible consequences of deliberate ignorance.

David Latimer

Medicine Hat

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