Editor's File: Not all facts are created equal: Honest debate on climate — or any topic — requires reasonable arguments

The decision of our editorial board to take a stand against some of the junk science that has fueled the noisy national argument in this country over climate change was not made lightly.

Adapting successfully to climate change is an existential threat for humanity as a warming planet encroaches on our shorelines, reroutes ocean currents and fish populations, disrupts our weather and potentially our food supplies.

What that all will mean to human beings and other species remains speculation for scientists and governmental agencies whose responsibilities it will be to help lead the way into an uncertain future.

Conversations about adapting to that future are well underway, however.

After Hurricane Sandy unleashed a 14-foot tidal surge in 2012, serious conversations began about building a seawall to protect New York Harbor — at a cost of $6 billion.

Meanwhile, Congress temporarily intervened last week when federal flood insurance rates threatened to skyrocket in order to reflect the actual risk of living on the shoreline at a time of strengthening coastal storms.

What is no longer in serious question, though, is that global climate is changing. That much nearly every reputable climate scientist in the world agrees on.

Back in 2007, a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the evidence of a changing world climate was "unequivocal." Further, more than 90 percent of those scientists agreed that, since the middle of the 20th century, the burning of fossil fuels has caused "most of the observed increase" in average global temperatures.

But lest anyone think that it's just Al Gore and a bunch of pointy-headed scientists who never leave their laboratories long enough to shovel out their cars after a big snowstorm who are shouting that the sky is falling, even the major oil and gas companies acknowledge that the world needs answers to its climate change problem.

"There is increasing evidence that the earth's climate has warmed on average about 0.7 degrees C in the last century. Many global ecosystems, especially the polar areas, are showing signs of warming. CO2 emissions have increased during this same time period — and emissions from fossil fuels and land use changes are one source of these emissions. ... It is prudent to develop and implement strategies that address the risks, keeping in mind the central importance of energy to the economies of the world."

That's the official position of none other than Exxon Mobil, which rakes in almost $500 billion a year selling oil and gas.

Exxon Mobil's own scientists have been studying global warming for years, and their work has helped convince the company and the world's other energy giants that climate change is real and that government and business together must seek ways to slow the course of global warming and find new, more efficient ways to power our societies.

Identifying effective governmental policies and finding new sources of energy and increasing conservation should be the subject of intense, healthy debate. We all have a stake in the conversation because it will affect how we live and how our children and grandchildren live.

We welcome that conversation here. But what we don't welcome is the non-science that some use to make the argument that climate change isn't happening.

Some years ago during the debate over whether New Bedford would allow the introduction of fluoride into its water supply to improve dental health (which voters ultimately agreed to do), we received lots of letters from people around the country who tried to pass off as fact that fluoridation was part of a government plot to take away people's freedom or even act as birth control.

It would have been wrong for this newspaper to equate such "facts" with the real science behind fluoridation. We believe the same is true in the debate over climate change, where some people and groups for reasons of personal or political ideology continue to make arguments that climate change isn't happening using evidence that has been refuted.

It's the same sort of argument that is happening in places where some school boards are pressured to require that Biblical creationism be taught alongside evolution theory in science class using "evidence" that even courts have decided was ideology rather than science.

The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it this way: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Spot on, Senator.


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