Jeffrey Haycraft is a resident of Camden.
George Roof closes his most recent Opinion by inviting readers to “call me any name you’d like” (“Am I a fool for dismissing climate change?”).
Call me overly literal, but before we start assigning names, we should examine the reasoning of Mr. Roof’s piece.
Roof’s argument depends on a familiar trick: If climate science is not perfect, then it must be false. If renewable energy has drawbacks, climate change must be a hoax. If the Earth’s climate changed naturally before humans, humans cannot be influencing it now. If plants need carbon dioxide, more carbon dioxide must be harmless.
None of those conclusions follows from the premise.
The Earth warmed and cooled before industrialization. Of course it did. Forests also burned before humans existed; that does not mean humans cannot start fires. Natural causes and human causes are not mutually exclusive simply because one came first.
Plants use carbon dioxide. Also true. Plants use water, but that doesn’t make flooding beneficial. Something can be necessary in one amount and harmful in another. That is not environmental alarmism. It is how quantities work.
Roof also insists that weather and climate are “one in the same,” then cites the Chesapeake Bay freezing in 1978. But a cold day no more disproves long-term warming than a hot afternoon proves it. Weather is an event. Climate is a pattern. Confusing the two does not simplify the science; it simply changes the subject.
The same diversion occurs when the column turns to wind turbines, solar farms and China. Those are legitimate policy debates. Renewable energy has costs, limitations and environmental trade-offs. Nuclear power deserves a much larger role than many environmentalists have been willing to admit.
But a flawed solar project does not disprove atmospheric physics. A wind turbine made in China does not change how greenhouse gases behave. Bad climate policy is not evidence against climate science any more than a bad medical bill disproves illness.
Then comes the argument that Delaware is too small to matter. Conveniently, every state, country and individual could make the same claim. No raindrop believes it caused the flood.
Reasonable people can debate how quickly to reduce emissions, which technologies deserve investment and how much economic disruption is justified. Those are difficult questions. Declaring the entire problem a hoax because some proposed solutions are imperfect is not skepticism. It is avoiding the harder conversation. What if we “wasted our time” and just happened to make the Earth a better place?
So, am I a fool for not dismissing climate change?
Call me any name you like, but I would feel foolish dismissing a body of evidence from qualified experts who have studied the effects of humanmade climate change just because the planet once had glaciers, plants enjoy carbon dioxide, and solar panels are not magic.
Name-calling is easy. Reasoning is harder.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
