Dear editor:
It is interesting that as the United Nations’ climate change conference began Sunday, Dec. 2, that recent research by various groups indicate the growing dangers of climate change. There are still many skeptical of the role human activity plays in this, including our president, a good number of the GOP Congress and even some Democrats.
A most interesting Washington Post article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Sunday, Dec. 2, issue by Max Boot, a conservative skeptic, examines in detail his recent conversion as a “believer.” Space does not allow for a detailed account of his “confessional” piece, but some data is worth noting.
He recalls, as various news agencies have presented, the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a U.S. government report, presenting clear and compelling evidence that global average temperature is much higher than anything modern civilization has experienced, with widespread impact.
This report echoes the October 2017 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a work of 91 scientists from 60 countries. It describes the more obvious impacts of worsening food shortages (droughts) and wildfires (like those of recent weeks in California), and a massive die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040.
Lesser known and talked-about impacts include Alaskan shellfish struck by an outbreak of warm-water bacteria; more melting icebergs in Antarctica causing whales to bellow louder over the noise of the berg breakups; once-tropical mosquitoes, disease-carrying arriving in Canada; the grounding of many planes in Arizona because hotter air is thinner, making takeoffs and landings hazardous; and the stimulation of wars like those in Nigeria recently between farmers and cattle-herders competing for diminishing water supplies.
Skeptics are unable to tell the difference in various local short-term weather fluctuations and long-term climate trends and future impacts. The latter can in the future have disastrous effects on the U.S. economy as well as the world economy. It is strange to me that a country that prides itself on the knowledge of science and its many positive results has a leader and so many others who refuse to recognize the data of the majority of scientists in our land. And when we learn that the president’s minions buried the Fourth National Climate Assessment after Thanksgiving, it gives serious-thinking citizens pause to wonder about the value of education.
John W. “Doc” Crawford
Hot Springs