Chicken Littles
For several years now, we have been warned that our planet is in danger due to man-made global warming. Recently, the term “climate change” has been used instead as the idea of warming is hard to swallow after this past brutal winter.
I was in high school and college during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I remember all of the brutal winters we had then. At the time, there was talk that perhaps we were entering a new ice age.
Now, about 35 years later, we are supposedly headed toward the opposite extreme. That makes no sense to me, and I see the climate change crowd as a bunch of modern-day Chicken Littles.
I would like to remind your readers that during the 1970s, we were told that the world’s oil reserves were going to run out in 25 years. My junior high school teachers warned us repeatedly that the end of oil was imminent. They had us all scared that we were going to be living in log cabins with no electricity.
We were so indoctrinated that we thought anyone who disagreed was crazy.
I remember talking to one of the engineers at my dad’s company, and he said we had plenty of oil. I figured he was just in denial because everyone else was saying the opposite.
Of course, the engineer was right, and everyone else was wrong. The news media and my teachers had made me worried and miserable for no reason.
There are always going to be Chicken Littles who are only happy when they are making everyone else miserable. I hope everyone will start recognizing this and will stop letting them control our lives.
— James DuBose, Rochester, Ill.
Denying science
Referring to overwhelming scientific evidence that people are causing the planet to warm, tea party Sen. Marco Rubio says, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”
He is among the Republican politicians who believe that driving cars and burning coal don’t adversely affect the climate. Many deny the recent report by scientists and economists that pollution generated by human activity is already costing Americans by raising the temperature of the oceans and amplifying destructive weather patterns.
I guess this is why the Republicans continue to imply that regulations to reduce pollution are some kind of Marxist plot to stymie individual freedoms.
Many thorough scientific studies have confirmed that humans are polluting the air and water and that oceans will rise as the temperature increases. This is no conspiracy; it is a fact! It is simply explaining scientific evidence and alerting Americans to the dangers of pollution.
With the right-wing Republican Party, science is out and profits are up. But don’t tell Rubio that Miami will be under water if we listen to him and his pals.
— Tom Minnerick, Elgin
Scientific information
I find it difficult to understand how some people can accept lots of scientific information about lots of different things like the weather, health, medicine, etc., but somehow find it impossible to believe that they should recycle their trash or stop using so much of our natural resources to excess, as though they will never dry up.
Isn’t it possible that global warming is occurring?
Fracking! Doesn’t that mean we’re fracturing the Earth? I’m not sure on this, but it sure seems like it.
I apologize! I overlooked the fact that some of these people are possibly direct descendants of those who believed the world was flat.
There, that explains it!
— Edwina Jackson, Chicago
Climate change
Human-caused climate change is here and greatly affecting people each and every day. We need to start acting to stop it. What we need is effective national climate change legislation in the form of a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The kinds of stories that show the human face of climate change greatly help to build the political will needed to do this.
— Holly Saari, Naperville
