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Chances are you did not hear this. Most folks still haven't. But... MORE THAN 99.9% OF STUDIES DONE BY CLIMATE EXPERTS NOW AGREE: HUMANS ARE CAUSING CLIMATE CHANGE." And yes,99.9% certainty is considered as close to a scientific fact as possible.
This virtually universal agreement among climate scientists is based on wide-ranging research from various disciplines such as climatology, physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. Scientific climate specialists worldwide have gone from 97% to virtual unanimity that our current climate threats are caused by human beings and can be changed only by reversals in human behavior.
On Oct. 19, 2021, the Alliance for Science at Cornell University published a study in the Journal Environmental Research Letters. entitled "Greater than 99 consensus on human cause climate change in peer reviewed literature." The Alliance for Science surveyed 88,125 climate-related studies from all over the world and reported that more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans. There is now virtual unanimity on man-made climate change in the climatological community. Check it out.
In addition, without a single exception, there is no reputable scientific national or international academy, agency, or association ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD that denies the human influence on climate change. Let that sink in. NOT A ONE. Two decades have passed since two of the last holdouts, The American Meteorological Society (AMS) and The American Geophysical Union (AGU) officially acknowledged in 2003 that the global warming we are now experiencing is caused by human activity.
The folks who know the difference between weather and climate, the American Meteorological Society attributes current extreme weather events to climate change. The AMS has officially recognized the influence of human activities on Earth's climate and acknowledges that certain types of extreme weather events have become more likely or severe as a result. The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency has estimated that "extreme weather events, compounded by climate change, caused nearly 12,000 disasters and a death toll of 2 million between 1970 and 2021."
Even many major fossil fuel companies have publicly acknowledged the scientific consensus that human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, are contributing to climate change. ExxonMobil, Shell, British Petroleum, Chevron, and Total Oil are among the big oil companies that have acknowledged manmade climate change. They recognize the importance of transitioning to a low-carbon economy and have taken steps to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. Those who end up covering the financial costs of climate catastrophes, the reinsurance companies (for example, giants Swiss Reinsurance, AXA, Allianz, Zurich Insurance Group, Munich Reinsurance Group) also officially and unqualifiedly affirm the reality of man-made climate change as a proven scientific fact.
At the same time. two thirds of Americans think that that man-made climate change is a fact. But two thirds of Republicans don't. And though Senate Republicans represent a minority of Americans, they have been the single most potent force at stalling our nation's efforts to help avoid a headlong dash toward climate calamity. It is now clear who may well be the practical winners in the debate about manmade climate warming. That argument may have ended long ago. Science appears to have lost. Federal doubt-spreading Republican policy makers seem to have won. The argument, such as it is, may be be determined on political, not scientific grounds.
Why? Because we continue to elect enough politicians who, though they could address the issue, instead continue to pay no mind to the super-majority of climatologists who think manmade climate change is real and dangerous. It is true that some Republicans have publicly acknowledged the reality of climate change and advocated for conservative approaches to addressing it, such as market-based solutions or technological innovation. But it is also a matter of documented act, and not some Democratic talking point, that over the last fifty years, the Republican National Committee and Republican legislators have opposed policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In their platforms and House and Senate roll call records, they have also consistently thwarted climate regulations that they say are too burdensome to businesses and the economy. If they acknowledge the reality of climate change, they minimize its effects. If they have one objection answered, they move the goal post. If they fear only governments are big enough to address the problem, they dismiss the problem with the solution. Republican politicians have been the single most effective obstacles to the enactment of climate change legislation. They don't deny that fact. They boast about it.
It is therefore not surprising that historically, Republican candidates have received much larger amounts of campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry compared to their Democratic counterparts. Their opposition evokes John Updike astute observation: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." As of this writing, manmade climate doubters will have their way with policy makers, science be damned, if we continue to elect Republicans to positions of political power where they continuously block efforts addressing climate change.
Legislative doubters are not without powerful backup. Major influential U. S. organizations like the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and the highly secretive American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) —all recipients of fossil industry largesse--unfailingly provide doubters with specious, supportive arguments that reject human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, as the primary driver of current climate change. They continue to do so even now, when there are as few scientists who deny manmade climate as there are scientists who reject the idea the world is spherical in shape.
These doubters provide an endless stream of canned, "pseudo-gotcha" questions on issues previously explained ad nauseam to an audience of propagandists who have never so much as perused the first paragraph of a peer reviewed climatology essay, yet brazenly regurgitate their BS to readers who will never fact check their misinformation. They are almost always wrong but never uncertain. Then much of conservative media broadcasts and publishes their debunked messaging without mentioning the universal findings of science that consider such attestations to be baloney…a pleasure to consume, as long as you ignore the sodium, nitrites, fillers and occasional offal.
Scientific inquiry was once the gold standard for determining sensible solutions and promoting safety. Gone are the days. In the words of one cynic, today, even though our national competitiveness depends on science and technology, many people proudly display their unsupported convictions by doubly down in the face of the contrary scientific evidence: "The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion. And if the facts don't fit what you already believe, change the facts, but never, ever your mistaken preconceptions."
After all, some folks seem to be saying: the now almost daily deadly floods, heat waves, droughts and largely unreported mass migrations in the sub-Saharan nations of Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, and Ethiopia, the Pacific Islands nations, and Bangladesh, are inevitable and beyond our ability to affect. We didn't cause them and we can't stop them. So quit all the fuss, and just hunker down, and wait out the storm. It's gotta end some time. The same people who bitterly complain when the government does not respond quickly to local disasters, can't bring themselves to acknowledge a role for government and international governmental cooperation to avoid this impending global calamity.
The doubters consider science's incessant clarion call about the dangers of manmade climate change to be strident alarmism. I am not surprised many want to play down or reject the world's actual vulnerability. I think that is because we are as disquieted by thoughts of the existential threat to our planet as we are about the dread of our own personal deaths. Maybe more so.
Tim Mannello is a retired healthcare executive and management consultant residing in Williamsport.