Summers as a kid began by visiting my grandparents on a former blueberry farm in East Killingly. There I would sip iced tea, play croquet, eat watermelon pickle, and fall asleep to the sound of crickets.
My parents also rented a cottage on Cape Cod. My brother, sister, and I would play, go to nature-based classes, and take swimming lessons at Stoney Beach. One summer, my family travelled to California, pulling a camper, and staying at national parks.
I’d like every kid to have the same opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors.
Most Americans are worried or alarmed about climate change. This is a reasonable response to rising sea levels, heat waves, bigger wildfires, longer droughts, and stronger storms. Different plant and animal populations are exploding or collapsing. Some species are moving higher up mountains or further from the equator. The military calls changing climate a threat multiplier because it makes other problems harder to solve.
Almost all atmospheric scientists believe that the recent rise in earth’s average surface temperature is real and largely caused by human activity. Sun rays are absorbed by the earth or reflected into space. Excessive greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide (CO2), make the planet too warm, like an extra blanket. Planet Venus is an example of runaway warming.
Katharine Hayhoe, who is the World Evangelical Alliance Climate Ambassador, recommends the website skepticalscience.com. Its mission is to debunk climate misinformation by presenting peer-reviewed science and to explain the techniques of science denial, discourses of climate delay, and climate solutions denial.
As an adult, I taught epidemiology. Each year I assigned students to use the National Library of Medicine’s tutorial on evaluating internet health information. My course covered research designs, study biases, and measures of statistical significance.
Skepticism is an approach, not a position. Some questions are eventually settled to the satisfaction of most experts, and new questions arise with the accumulation of knowledge.
The attribution of recent warming to humans is clinched by excluding other explanations. Variation in solar and volcanic activity, or in the earth’s orbit or tilt, cannot produce the warming observed over the last half century. Ocean cycles such as El Niño cannot change the global average temperature.
As evidence builds, we get a clearer picture of what is driving climate. Scientists measure how much carbon is put into and taken out of the atmosphere through natural versus unnatural processes. We now see many lines of evidence pointing to the burning of fossil fuels.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has high confidence that most of the global warming since 1850 is due to human activity. Conversely, natural processes since 1970 contributed almost nothing to net temperature change.
In the sixth IPCC report, estimated net warming between 1850-1900 and 2010-2019 was 1.09 degrees Celsius, while the human contribution was 1.07 °C. As the underlying data are accurate, we can be 95% certain that the true value lies within the given range. The net warming range was 0.95-1.20 °C and the range for human contribution was 0.8-1.3 °C.
For the same period, greenhouse gas emissions from human sources warmed earth 1-2 °C, partly masked by aerosol cooling to produce the 1.07 °C estimate. Natural solar and volcanic variation altered temperature perhaps 0.1 °C up or down. The anthropogenic forces, says the IPCC report, arise from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production.
Today about 80% of human contributions to warming are from burning coal, oil, and gas. The remainder comes from deforestation and industrial agriculture. The rise in average global temperature accelerated after 1970, a period in which carbon emissions also rose. NASA confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year since record-keeping began in 1880, 1.47 °C above the 1850-1900 average, and 1.28 °C above the 1951-1980 average.
As a trustee in my congregation, I try to be a good steward of resources. Last year, the church installed energy-efficient lighting. This year, before Congress removes clean energy tax credits, we will improve insulation and install solar panels to generate electricity. All are financially smart moves.
Fossil fuels have brought benefits such as longer lives on average, as well as health and environmental costs. I am challenged to respond to climate change while loving my neighbor. I urge climate-friendly legislation. Carbon fee and dividend has a conservative pedigree and support from economists. I examine my own habits. I also urge resilience and adaptation measures to mitigate the harmful effects of our continuing reliance on fossil fuels.
Jon Olson of Simsbury’s Weatogue section is a volunteer for the Citizen’s Climate Lobby.
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