Ignore climate deniers

In recent opinion submissions to the StarPhoenix, Herb Pinder (July 16) claimed that climate change is no big deal and in fact is just a natural occurrence, while Michael Mann, the scientist whose work Pinder used to make his case, responded by accusing Pinder of offering up a litany of untruths and specious factoids.

Meanwhile, Geoff Galloway wrote to profess that the climate is actually cooling, and that readers need only look up the facts to confirm his conclusion. One reader did just that and reported in a letter that there is no such assertion, including the sources Galloway used. Economist Ross McKitrick wrote to implore that we have a “calm civil debate on climate,” as if this were still a debatable issue.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has concluded that the climate is changing, and that it has been induced by anthropogenic interference. In other words, humans are spewing enough greenhouse gases (i.e. carbon) into the atmosphere, trapping heat that would otherwise escape, resulting in global temperatures rising to dangerous levels.

In 1997, the OECD countries and all other nations came together in Kyoto, Japan, with the best global scientists to discuss how to address this crisis.

The debate on if there is a crisis had long since passed, even back then.

Are we to go back to debating whether the sun revolved around the Earth, as was once believed? If a polar bear drowns where large tracts of Arctic ice once were, do we really think it’s because he’s a poor swimmer, or is it because the Earth is actually warming?

It’s time to move past the climate deniers and toward enhancing the public’s understanding of the issue. David Viminitz, Saskatoon