Skeptics ignore climate science

It is depressing to read yet another uninformed political commentator with no credentials in science, much less in climatology, touting the climate-change-skeptic fiction that the science of climate change is seriously flawed. If I suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and bled profusely, I would not trust a physician who focused attention on my left foot and proclaimed it looks fine so I'd be all right -- then failed to treat the bullet wound. Paying attention to George Will's flat-Earth brigade -- folks who argue smoking is harmless, DDT is the cure for all our environmental and health ills and global warming does not exist -- is like listening to the quack who claims the bullet in the chest is no problem.

Despite the hype of the skeptics and commentators with an agenda that demands denial of evidence when it challenges their political philosophy, climate change continues. Those arguing the recent snowstorms are evidence that climate change is not happening must ignore the fact that climate theory predicts exactly such abnormal weather patterns.

The decade just passed is the hottest on record, and 2009 was one of the hottest years on record. Warming continues. These data are not questioned by practicing climate scientists.

Just as the movie "Avatar" depicts, some individuals are so committed to short-term profit that they would destroy the planet to make a few dollars. Luckily, one by one, local businesses and multinational corporations alike are rejecting the skeptic idiocy and adopting green standards.

ALAN JOURNET,

Cape Girardeau