OPINION: Greenhouse gases do exist
Global warming is not a hoax. It is a major problem that humanity must accept and face. This is no prank pulled by a group of corrupt scientists trying to get funding for their research. Rob Davies, a USU physicist said:
“Earth’s changing climate is fast emerging as this century’s pre-eminent challenge. A diverse collection of broad, deep independent lines of evidence has led to robust scientific conclusions: Earth is warming, principally attributable to humans, and posing a serious threat to humans, human society and the human ecosystem. The effort that has led to these conclusions is truly breathtaking — a scientific tour de force and a crowning achievement of humanity’s scientific enterprise.”
I am no scientist, and I don’t claim to be one. I do understand that science is done in laboratories, published in journals, peer reviewed by scientists around the world and repeated again and again. That’s how science works. Experiments are not conducted by politicians. They are not conducted by creative writers.
CNN and Fox News are not made up of scientists — they trick people into thinking they are scientists by inviting random scientists onto their shows, paying them to say whatever Fox wants them to say and showing it to millions of people on the nightly news. I’m sorry, this does not accurately portray science.
I like what science gives the world enough to support its future, listen to and accept its findings, and act accordingly. Scientific studies suggest climate change is real. It is a big deal. Humanity has never existed on Earth with the temperatures we could face in the near future, and we don’t know what to expect.
This issue has the potential to fundamentally change where we can produce our food, how much water we can pump into our cities and how we circulate goods throughout the world. It’s worth listening to the people who spend their lives studying these issues.
After Friday night at “Evening with the Bioneers,” I was left gasping for clean air. Brian Moench, an anesthesiologist lectured on the health damages caused by airborne particulate matter pollution — what we face in Logan most poignantly during winter inversions.
Kenneth Godfrey, a well-known Mormon historian, lectured on the connection the LDS faith has to the Earth. He spoke about everything from Joseph Smith’s city planning, where every home was designed to have a garden, to the belief that the Earth will become the Celestial Kingdom — the highest degree of heaven.
Then this thought hit me: The pioneers had it right, and we’ve screwed it up. Now, I am no apologist for the way the pioneers came into this area, fought with the rightful inhabitants and created a strange and wonderful fringe state that has, over the last 100 or so years, moved toward being the most conservative place in the world. But, they connected with the land in a way we no longer do.
We enjoy most benefits science has given us without question. Everyone at USU takes basic science courses, learns what atoms are and how plants turn sunlight into life for all of us. We learn the dangers of eating NaCl we create in chemistry lab. We accept the fact that we rotate around the Sun. We accept all the awesome things that make life better, and we love science for those things; and yet it’s so hard to accept scientific consensus on climate change.
Resistance is a big factor in this consensus, because it steers our development in a new and uncomfortable direction. It necessitates action, creativity and change, and we don’t like change. We like getting into our Ford F-250s, filling them with petrol, then driving them to our neighbor’s house. We like burning coal for electricity, having Red Air Days and throwing out 99 percent of the things we buy within their first month of use.
This is not a hoax. Of the 70-plus major scientific organizations on the planet, there are none, zero, nada, that dissent on this issue, denying the impact humanity has on climate change.
The National Academy of Sciences and all major scientific organizations claim the change in climate is most likely caused by greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity. In the scientific world this is a big deal.
Why is this even a debate? Why can’t people accept this science as readily as they accept what their chemistry book teaches them? If you can’t accept science, try telling me the sun revolves around us.
— Samuel Abbott is a senior majoring in history and director of Students for Sustainability. His column runs the first Wednesday of every month. Comments can be sent ot him at samuel.abbott@aggiemail.usu.edu.