Don’t be a Denier

There are so many science deniers these days. It used to be that only people of small religious orders did not believe in things like medicine, putting their life in the hands of god. I on the other hand, put my health in the hands of doctors who God made.

I understand that not everyone understands medicine so rather than expanding their minds they just close down, but what about science when it comes to weather? I feel like even the least educated can see how weather has changed over the years.

As a child growing up in Connecticut we did not have air conditioning in our house or our cars. I can’t think of any friends who had air conditioning so it was not just those of us who lived in drafty barns. Summer would come and we had our windows opened with screens in them. If it got particularly hot we had box fans, but for the most part it never got so hot that we could not function.

In the worst part of August we would leave relatively cool New England and make a two day drive to South Carolina for our beach vacation with no air conditioning. I take that back, we had air conditioning in the Holiday Inn’s we stayed at on the drive down one night and the drive back. Even in Pawleys Island August we just had fans and the ocean breeze. If the middle of the day had a land breeze we might go in to Georgetown to go to the movies, but most of the time it was bearable.

That was fifty years ago. Today I do not think I could survive a Pawleys Island summer without air conditioning, even with a good ocean breeze.

My cousin who is a Astro physicist told us 30 years ago not to move anywhere west of the Mississippi because there would not be enough water. She predicted serious droughts. This morning on CBS Sunday morning there was a scientist talking about the 22 year drought that is happening in the west. My brilliant cousin was right, but even knowing it then, no one listened enough to change quickly enough.

We can’t do anything about what we did not do yesterday. We can only do better today and tomorrow and everyday after that. It is time to pay attention to scientists. They don’t have a reason to lie, in fact most scientists I know are almost incapable to lie.

We can’t air condition ourselves out of climate change. We have to embrace all the little things we can do to reduce global warming as well as all the big things, which starts with embracing science and electing people who care about not just next week or next year, but fifty years and two hundred years from now.

In my lifetime I have seen everything get warmer, longer. My life has not been that long so far. If I can measure in a part of a life imagine how bad it will get over multiple generations. Don’t be a denier.