ETCETERA

NIGHTCAP

Climate Change

It's A Real Thirig

By Harry Kirsbaum

love the way the climate change
deniers trot out the 3 percenters,
those scientists who agree that
climate change is false, and merely a
Democratic political tool to force more
regulations on companies around the
country and increase taxes.
Politics and religion are based on
belief, and everyone has a right to their
own. But science is science. It's based
on critical thinking, empirical proof and
reason.
If you had an ache in your gut, went
to 100 doctors and 97 of them said it
was something serious and could pos-
sibly be cancer, would you listen to the
three who said it was probably nothing?
Would you take those odds if you had
squeaky brakes in your car and only

I

three repairmen said the same thing?
If you listen to the Republicans, this is
all political. If you listen to Rush Lim-
baugh, Mark Levin and Sean Hannity
when they interview their"scientists,"
climate change plainly doesn't exist,
and it's yet another way that President
Obama can destroy capitalism.
Go ahead and ignore the National
Climate Assessment, an 840-page
document compiled by 300 scientists
and experts with the support of 18
American scientific societies, academies
and more than 200 worldwide scientific
organizations.
If the rest of the world is thinking of
solutions, why can't we?
According to the assessment,
"Evidence for climate change abounds,

from the top of the atmosphere to the
depths of the oceans. Scientists and
engineers from around the world have
meticulously collected this evidence,
using satellites and networks of weather
balloons, thermometers, buoys and
other observing systems.
"Evidence of climate change is also
visible in the observed and measured
changes in location and behavior of
species and functioning of ecosystems.
Taken together, this evidence tells
an unambiguous story:The planet is
warming, and over the last half century,
this warming has been driven primarily
by human activity:"
Here in the Midwest, the assessment
foresees a decline in crop yields, public
health risks due to increased heat wave
intensity and frequency, and reduced
water quality, increased rainfall and
flooding, and negative effects to the
Great Lakes due to increased algae
and invasive species. Our region also
produces greenhouse gas emissions
20 percent higher than the national
average.
To the 27 percent of Americans who
don't believe in climate change, go
ahead, dismiss the 97 percent of scien-
tists and stick with the others. You're
most likely the same 30 percent who
strictly believe in creationism and think
that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

Ignore the fact that the trace uranium
found in a meteorite that crashed into
the Earth in Arizona is 50,000 years old.
Neil deGrasse Tyson in the Fox series
Cosmos also disproved a similar theory
about the age of the universe, which
some claim is 6,500 years old.
Citing hundreds of billions of galaxies
in the observable universe, Tyson said,
"The Crab Nebula is about 6,500 light
years from Earth. According to some
beliefs, that's the age of the whole
universe, but if the universe were only
6,500 years old, how could we see light
from anything more distant than the
Crab Nebula? We couldn't"
These same people also question the
consensus of the 97 percent of scientists
who believe in climate change, even
though NASA supported it. You remem-
ber NASA? Weren't they the people who
sent astronauts to the moon with the
help of computers that had the same
power as your smartphone?
Why would anyone ignore survey
results from those guys?
I'd like to ask the 3 percenters two
questions: What's the age of the uni-
verse? What's the age of the Earth?
If their answer is calculated in the
thousands of years, they can't call them-
selves scientists.

our child's journey to adulthood
deserves to be celebrated in spectacular
fashion. We know just the place...

100 Townsend Street, Birmingham MI, 48009
Contact Joanie Sams at 248-642-5191 or
Sams@Townsendhotel.com
www.townsendhotel.com

www.redthreadmagazine.com

RED THREAD I June 2014 37