Climate change requires action

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To the editor,

Unfortunately, John J. Sweeney is factually incorrect in his sanguine attitude about climate change (“Learn to Love Climate Change,” Oct. 1). Yes, change is in the nature of life and our world. But as the vast preponderance of the world’s climate experts, including those with NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense, have urgently explained, the world is in the midst of unprecedented (in scale and speed) global warming caused by human activity -— largely by the burning of fossil fuels. Mr. Sweeney refers to “a bit of warming” — the facts belie that description: 2015 is on track to be the warmest year on record. The month of July was the warmest month ever recorded.

Mr. Sweeney cites recent record snowfalls as counter-evidence of global warming. The exact opposite is true: those massive snowfalls are positive evidence of climate change. The heating of the planet due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is leading to vastly increased water vapor in the air, which comes down in unprecedented rainfalls and snowstorms in some regions. Climate change is occurring exactly as scientific models have predicted: creating wildly erratic and extreme weather, unprecedented species extinction, vanishing ecosystems, ocean acidification on a global scale, the melting of the polar ice caps and many other effects.

The impacts on our own species are being felt around the world, particularly on “front line” communities — poor people in developing countries whose poverty and nature-dependent livelihoods put them at most risk of the effects of rising seas and deadly storms, new diseases, droughts, etc. But no human on Earth will be immune to the effects of climate change... In fact, climate change is already touching the lives of each and every one of us.

climate change, Jennifer Scarlott
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