I’d like to respond to Geoff Delin’s rebuttal of Morgan Liddick’s “Climate change two-step” commentary (published Sept. 3 in the Summit Daily News). In his letter to the editor (“Liddick fails to acknowledge climate change consensus,” published Sept. 7), Delin repeats the 97% consensus theory.
Many people, including President Barack Obama, have quoted the study produced by John Cook, et al, which proclaimed 97% agreement among climate scientists on the issue of anthropogenic (human associated) global warming. The study has since been picked apart (Google “John Cook 97% consensus”), but the harm to scientific debate lives on. The goal of scientific research is to challenge, to question, to disprove old dogma, to think outside the box. Where would the field of physics be today if Albert Einstein hadn’t persisted in his efforts to defy the scientific consensus of his era? Nowadays, anyone who holds an alternate view on climate change is shot down as a “climate denier.”
Unfortunately, politics has entered the arena of scientific discourse. Rajenda Pachauri, the founding director of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, openly admitted to only recruiting climatologists convinced of CO2 warming. The Paris Climate Agreement was an exercise in virtue signaling. To quote the New York Times, “Many of the Paris pledges remain fairly opaque, and most nations have been vague on what specific policies they will take to meet them. There is no official mechanism for quantifying progress.”
I challenge my fellow readers to expand their source of information regarding the topic of climate change. I recommend entering the word “climate” in the search window of PragerU.com. For other eye-opening articles, check out City-journal.org/html/unsettling-climate-13669.html and City-journal.org/global-warming. Accept or reject the information as you please, but it never hurts to keep an open mind.