The Sept. 9 editoria cartoon in The Lima News takes President Obama to task for ignoring “the mounting evidence against climate change science.” The trouble is, of course, there is no mounting evidence against climate change science — or, more exactly, against the assertion (embraced by over 97 percent of experts in the field that man, by dumping billions of tons of heat-retaining gas into our paper-thin atmosphere every year, is causing that atmosphere to warm dangerously.
The Lima News might as well publish a cartoon taking Obama to task for ignoring the mounting evidence that smoking cigarettes is perfectly harmless to one’s health. But that would be silly, wouldn’t it? Everyone knows smoking causes cancer and heart disease. The fact is that the level of certainty among scientists that man is causing global warming is equivalent to the level of certainty that smoking is dangerous to one’s health.
Climate change deniers like to call the thousands of scientists who have accepted the reality of global warming “alarmists.” It’s true that these scientists are alarmed, but that does not make them alarmists. If your family physician manifests alarm when he discovers that your child has a body temperature of one hundred and five degrees, he’s not being an alarmist, he’s doing his job. Just so, climate scientists, in warning us of the dangers of man-made global warming, are doing their jobs. They deserve to be thanked for this, not abused and vilified by a motley crew of fossil-fuel-company hacks and cynical politicians.
The only things that are “mounting” these days, I’m afraid, are global temperatures and the climate change deniers’ desperation to keep the public confused on this crucial issue. It’s embarrassing that The Lima News is aiding and abetting this pernicious disinformation campaign.
— Dr. Kelly Anspaugh, Ada
