Ninety-seven percent of environmental scientists agree that climate change/global warming is happening and is significantly caused by human activity (release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane).
This, they argue, is an existential threat to the planet. This level of scientific agreement is equivalent to the consensus among scientist s that smoking causes cancer (do the climate change deniers also dispute this fact?).
Some facts:
- Record warm temperatures around the globe keep rising at alarming levels. Sixteen out of the seventeen warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.
- Artie sea ice is diminishing, causing a rise in global ocean levels, eroding coasts and devastating
- Ocean waters are becoming warmer damaging coral reefs and marine Not to mention the effect of warming oceans on the severity of storms that have statistically increased in recent years causing catastrophic loss of life and property. The proliferation of California fires is often cited as an example. Thi s is only going to get worse, scientists opine.
- Glaciers are severely melting, causing a loss of water that people around the globe depend on. Avalanches and landslides are dramatically Glacier National Park in Montana has only twenty-five remaining glaciers. In the 1980s there were approximately 150.
- Hundreds (389) of North American birds face extinction due to climate change, reports a current study by the National Audubon Society. Other animals that are increasingly threatened are whales, elephants, giraffes, sharks, great apes, and the Monarch butterfly.
These are just a scant few of the shocking ramifications of human activity that promotes and causes climate change and global warming.
The devastation is green-lighted at full speed by the current administration in the White House whose leader has called climate change a “Chinese Hoax.”
He has embarrassingly withdrawn our country from the Paris Climate Accords. The United States of America is the only nation on the planet to do so. In addition, he has already done away with a multitude of environmental regulations, designed to protect the environment.
But wait! John Messina from East Williston (in this publication. Oct. 11 has uncovered irrefutable proof that Trump and his head in the sand base must be right that climate change does not exist.
His exhaustive research has revealed that President Obama has purchased a home near a body of water.
I guess that settles it. Who can argue with that logic?
Perhaps smoking is not bad for you either.
Herbert Steinberg
Great Neck
