Climate change is still unsettling

After reading Steven E. Koonin’s book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tell Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” (May, 2021), I remain convinced that we humans must curb our impact on the planet. Far from denying the climate is changing, his book is rather an attempt to set the record straight about what is actually known as opposed to what scientific models are predicting. His book is dense with facts, figures, graphs and charts, all of which he has meticulously referenced for readers who need to see it for themselves.

His conclusions: The Earth is going through another period of warming that is causing all manner of life to respond through adaptation or extinction. Human causation of this warming cannot, at this time, be proven with any great certainty. The feasibility of simply stopping what we’re doing is not possible given the individual sacrifice required on a global scale. The media and the politicians are using the changing climate to make a buck and further their careers, respectively, while unnecessarily creating a climate of fear (no pun intended).

None of what I read translates into a sigh of relief. Indeed, while all manner of flora and fauna are responding to the warming planet, we humans with our big brains are still trying to decide if we should do something. Well, YEAH! If we don’t adapt NOW, we’ll simply be another species that went extinct, proving that we were not the fittest to survive after all.

— Marcella Seay, Magalia