Just the facts, ma’am, no doomsday climate rhetoric

On October 9th my e-mail box was jammed with messages from every publication employing a science journalist. The foremost climate change organization on the planet had issued an exhaustive study.

The IPCC is elite scientists that gather and study the work of thousands of other leading climate scientists. Organizationally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a union of the U.N. Environmental Program and the World Meteorological Organization. There are 194 nations participating. Our U.S. scientists and organizations play important roles in formulating, gathering and analyzing this data. This last report was the synthesis of 6000 scientific studies.

The island nations of our planet pleaded with the IPCC to do this climate analysis now because the coral reefs surrounding their islands are dying and the oceans are creeping up the beach. To put this in perspective, they are not worried about their financial well-being, they are worried about their survival.

The IPCC responded. It agrees with a recent study by our National Academies of Science, and our US governmental science agencies’ report of 2017. The IPCC says we must start aggressively fighting climate change, now. Meeting the challenge successfully “… would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban, and infrastructure and industrial systems.” *

Are the scientists doomsday pessimists? No! They tell us scientific truth and they identify “pathways” to a successful transition already here, with better ones being discovered.

The scientists are like Paul Revere. When he rode through the villages yelling, “the Red-Coats are coming.” was he a doomsayer? Had the British prevailed he would have been. It was the American people who made Paul Revere a hero because they came out and met the challenge with creative minds, strong hearts, and their wealth.

We can, just like our determined ancestors, turn the tide and slow the rate of warming minimizing the future damage of drought and flooding. The only ingredient the scientists tell us they cannot provide is the most important, political will.

Our forebearers had honest, science loving leaders like George Washington. The League of Conservation Voters has identified honest leaders nation-wide. In Wisconsin, the League of Conservation Voters has identified a leader who can read and understand climate science. Her name is Tammy Baldwin.

 Doomsday is not here.  All we must do is read, learn, speak-up, stand-up, and vote!                                                                                                             * For climate solutions read, Drawdown.

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