On climate, Slutsky earns failing marks

Harford County Council President Richard Slutsky did the public a disservice by wrongly denying the reality of the climate crisis (“Harford council president says he’s a human climate change denier,” Feb. 15). Despite his four decades as educator, he gets an “F” for his homework. He dismissed the conclusions of relevant scientific panels and all of the major academies of sciences around the world. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the UK’s Royal Academy jointly concluded that “it is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate.”

The Trump administration’s authoritative October 2017 “Climate Science Special Report” concluded “that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century” and that “there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

On Feb.13, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats cited climate change as a top threat to our national security, noting that “the effects of air pollution, inadequate water, and climate change on human health and livelihood will become more noticeable. Domestic policy responses to such issues will become more difficult — especially for democracies — as publics become less trusting of authoritative information sources.”

Forward-looking leaders deal honestly with reality and work to solve problems. Those who traffic in disinformation simply mislead the public to “become less trusting of authoritative information sources” and hinder the search for solutions and thus undermine national security.