St. James Plaindealer - St. James, MN
  • Global warming is real and is caused by man

  • Yes, Virginia....Global Warming is real and humans are almost entirely the cause.
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  • Yes Virginia....Global Warming is real and humans are almost entirely the cause.
    That is the conclusion of Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow.
    Dr. Muller had been a climate change skeptic because of problems that he saw in earlier studies that caused him to doubt the very existence of global warming.
    What's interesting about this research report published at the end of July is that it was largely funded by the Koch Brothers through their Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.
    Mega billionaires Charles and David Koch, are the owners of Koch Industries. The Kochs have been labeled the leading funders of climate disinformation in the world.
    It's been reported they spent more that $47 million in the last 15 years on funding projects that deny climate change.
    They've spent more than Exxon-Mobile on climate change denial projects. I'm guessing they didn't get what they thought they were paying for.
    Unfortunately for the Kochs, darn scientists like Muller follow the facts and the data.
    In a New York Times op ed Muller wrote, "Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
    "Our results show that the average temperature of the earth's land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
    Muller is another important scientist stating global warming is real and is caused by human activity. This is an opinion shared by 95+ percent of the scientists in this area of study.
    So, the scientific debate is settled! Over! Finished! Done!
    Climate change, global warming is real and it is caused by us.
    Page 2 of 2 - But we don't need dull reams of scientific data to tell us that.
    We are living it. We know it.
    The question is not what to do about it, but how to stop it. Even more precisely, do humans even have will to stop it.
    I'm not optimistic. The Surgeon General warned about smoking in 1964. A half century later there's been great progress made, but more than 440,000 Americans still die from smoking each year.
    We have a completely bought off political structure where a large number of politicians dance to the climate change denialist tune.
    Tackle global warming? Ha! Right now you've got Republicans wanting to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency - EPA.
    Maybe if the Koch Brothers had a scientific epiphany on this environmental crisis and put their money behind saving the environment, maybe then there would be a chance.
    Ahh, I'm too old to buy into that hopium. It's easier to plan on Southern Minnesota being in the wheat belt in 30 or 40 years - if we get enough rain.

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