In response to Mike Sigman’s May 19 letter, “Durango Herald joins sky-is-falling crowd,” I feel compelled to respond to the many inaccuracies and accusations. But to be fair, he was correct that climate change has happened throughout the Earth’s history. No one disputes that. However, more than 90 percent of scientists agree that human consumption of fossil fuels and the waste that it produces has significantly sped climate change in the last 100 years. That’s what science has proved with evidence (not spouted from talking heads with their own agendas). Global temps have not risen in the last 17 years? OK, let’s look at more realistic data for the last 100 years since the beginning of fossil fuel consumption. In the Northern Hemisphere, where most of Earth’s landmass is, the three decades from 1983 to 2012 were likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1,400 years, according to the IPCC.
We’re not talking just about climate change, we’re talking about the rapidity of the change and/or lack of response to the change. This is not a liberal conspiracy; it’s scientific fact. The Pentagon (notorious left wingers) just released its own study that identifies climate change as the No. 1 threat to national security. What usurpation of legislative powers has Obama committed or said he will commit in relation to climate change? A specific piece of evidence here would be nice, but it’s much easier to refute propaganda than facts, so thank you. Climate-change deniers can continue to bury their heads in the sand, consume as many resources as possible, and leave the world a much more difficult place for our children and grandchildren or they can open their eyes to the facts and evidence and at least try find solutions. If you need more evidence of climate change and rising temperatures, just look at the window at how little snow is in the mountains from year to year. There is less of it, and it melts much faster. We can either change and adapt, or collapse like the ancestral Puebloans and Romans.
Ryan Montgomery
Durango
