The Press-Republican makes no claim to expertise of any kind on the contentious issue of global warming. Like other non-scientists, we read and try to digest the competing evidence put forth by those who see climate mayhem on the horizon and those who see only unremarkable cycles in warming and cooling of mother Earth.
If we were going to pick sides, based on the evidence we've read, we'd say more-reliable testimony seems to be arriving, with greater frequency and more authority, on the side of current warming trends being accelerated by human habits. It just seems to stand to reason that millions of internal-combustion engines and factories spewing heat and gases is eventually going to take a toll on nature.
But that is admittedly based less on science than amateur common sense.
What we do feel strongly about, however, is how tenaciously some amateur "scientists" seem to cling to the notion that human activities have no influence over higher long-term temperatures and melting ice. The topic has become fuel for quite a bitter debate. Those who believe the climate change is not exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuel and other products of modern culture are adamant and very defensive about it.
It's as if the scientists advancing the notion of mankind's complicity in global warming are personally assaulting those who believe otherwise. This is difficult to understand.
The anti-warming side reports with great glee that frigid weather has struck here or there around the globe or that temperatures a certain week are sub-zero and that that automatically disqualifies the theory of greenhouse gases contributing to the warming of the planet. The globe can't be warming if there's been a nasty cold snap.
In fact, scientists who are wed to the greenhouse-gas side of the argument dismiss the phenomenon of cold weather immediately as a refutation of their point. Temperatures and climate are two very different things, they say. Climate change requires a study of patterns far longer than a week or two at a time.
Is it a personal affront to anyone to say that a proliferation of automobiles and carbon-spitting factories have led us down a path toward potentially dangerous climate change? It hardly seems so to us.
We admit to being climate-science neophytes and ill-equipped to make a sound judgment on whether humankind collectively has played a role in the melting of the polar ice cap — though it's hard to resist the facts put forth by Ray Johnson in his first-Sunday-of-the-month columns in the P-R. But we'll readily admit to a place in a society that could have contributed to global warming, wittingly or unwittingly. We're certainly not offended at the notion.
Global warming may be a figment of some Chicken Little's imagination. Or it may be the biggest calamity facing us. But wouldn't we all be wise to take the threat seriously while science compiles the proof that will finally bear out, indisputably, one side or the other?
Opinion
February 2, 2010
EDITORIAL: Hot debate over warming
- Editorial
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Editorial: No raise for state legislators
This is not the year for state lawmakers to look for a raise.
- Editorial: A pair of aces among the Cards
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Editorial: No raise for state legislators
- Cheers and Jeers
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Cheers and Jeers: Feb. 13, 2012
CHEERS to Peru High School teacher Kathleen Roach and Cardinal Points.
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Cheers and Jeers: Feb. 13, 2012
- Letters to the Editor
- Speakout
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In My Opinion: E'town water, sewer essential
Elizabethtown has a history of economic ups and downs, Town Supervisor Margaret Bartley writes.
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In My Opinion: E'town water, sewer essential
