Here come the deniers, the folks who take every opportunity to deny what science has declared to be fact, that Earth’s climate is changing.
Much of the nation is locked in a deep freeze. Hey, it’s winter. It happens every year at the time. Correct?
The Texas Panhandle is no different in that regard. Some of our locals like to brag about how cold it gets every winter. The wind howls and we joke about having to string another length of barbed wire to keep the wind from blowing in from the Arctic.
Of course, this time of year brings out those who keep insisting the planet’s climate isn’t changing. Well, it is.
The debate, as I’ve tried to note all along, isn’t whether the climate is changing. The debate ought to center on its cause. Manmade or natural?
I’m not smart enough to make that determination myself. I try to leave it to scientists who’ve spent many lifetimes studying these things. Many of them say human beings have caused the climate to change by (a) emitting carbon dioxide into the air and (b) laying waste to hundreds of millions of acres of forestland populated by trees that replace the CO2 with oxygen. Others say the climate change is part of the epochal cycle the planet experiences every few million years — and that we’re entering the next cycle.
I tend to believe the human factor is the cause.
I’ll repeat something my dear late mother used to say about those who cannot see the big picture, that they’re “so narrow-minded they can look through a keyhole with both eyes.”
Look at the big picture, folks.