Bloomberg L.P., long noted for accurately delivering business and financial information, news and insight around the world, released an article in 2015 that asked: What’s Really Warming the World?
The article, based on findings from NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, directly addresses why we shouldn’t be swayed by the authors of recent letters to the editor, who assert that we would be foolish to prevent Grays Harbor from becoming an oil port.
Skeptics of man-made climate change deny that a global increase of 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880 has occurred because of human influence. They offer instead that any or all of a litany of natural causes are guilty:
• Earth’s orbit
• Solar temperature variation
• Volcanoes
• A combination of the above
The recorded linear history of these natural causes does not evidence significant individual or combined influence.
When the above natural factors do not serve their arguments, they then resort to asserting some man-made influences might then be the cause:
• Deforestation
• Ozone pollution
• Aerosol pollution
Again, these sources, not without influence, fall short of being the cause of the increasing temperature of our planet.
However, the one remaining influence, greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) has risen 40 percent since 1750 and together these human influences are causing global warming.
The peril of continued oil exploration, fracking, transportation and burning has become immediate. We see it every day in the headlines as more people suffer the impact of using fossil fuels. Regardless that the entire global economy has been built on its use, oil has taken us down a dead end road.
Those who myopically pursue the use of fossil fuels have pitted themselves against the rest of us. To debate, argue, confront or demonstrate against them usually does nothing to sway their mindset. They are greedy, narrow-minded and selfish people bent on having their own way.
Nothing less than our lives and those of future generations are at stake. We must think of it in no less terms and resolve to defend ourselves by any means necessary.
Tori Kovach
Raymond
