Dear editor:
I take issue with the portrayal by Ron Voss of climate change as a “scam”, people expressing urgency for climate action as “hysterical” and global warming as a “religion.”
Man-made climate change is real, and the evidence is overwhelming.
Local examples of climate change are evident for us to see, and that includes the environmental and economic impact of pine beetle infestations due to warmer winters, the rapid shrinking of our glaciers, droughts and massive flood events.
Insurance companies, no slouches in identifying scams, take global warming very seriously as climate change related claims could bankrupt them.
Voss quotes that, “global warming really has become a new religion.”
However, unlike religion, the research findings, methodology, conclusions and recommendations from the atmospheric scientific community are open to questions, criticism, new data and change. That is the nature of science. It is not based on faith or revelation.
On the other hand, climate change denial definitely has a religious component, particularly from religious varieties of a more fundamentalist, right-wing nature. A 2013 Yale Study titled, ‘American evangelicals and global warming’ identifies that evangelicals are less likely than non-evangelicals to believe that man-made global warming is happening.
An example of that viewpoint is a public statement by Republican U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who, while quoting Genesis 8:22, stated in 2012, “God’s still up there, and the arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.” Senator Inhofe now chairs the U.S. Senate environment and public works committee.
Tony Reuvers
