Letter | Follow the science on climate change | Letters to the Editor | captimes.com - The Capital Times
Letter | Follow the science on climate change | Letters to the Editor | captimes.com
Dear Editor: Winters have become noticeably warmer and shorter. The global warming and climate change we have been warned about is worsening. Even so, it remains difficult to speak with each other on this most important of issues.
If we are waiting for corporations to tell us global warming is real and caused by burning fossil fuels, that is not going to happen. But scientists throughout the world are all but unanimous on this issue and have been for decades. Depending on the survey, agreement continues to be about 95%.
We have followed the advice of our nation's scientists for over 100 years. Rarely have they spoken with such unanimity as they have on the issue of global warming and climate change.
I hope we will trust them now and not wait for 100% agreement, because we have not waited for it before and 100% agreement among scientists is not possible.
The longer we wait to make the changes in our lives necessary to burn less fossil fuels the more severe and rapid will be the destructive changes to our planet and all life on it.
Brian Berninger
Milton
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.