I have just read Michael Mann’s book, “The Madhouse Effect. How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying our Politics, and Driving us Crazy”

This is perhaps the contrarians’ greatest success: they have distracted one of our foremost atmospheric scientists from further documenting the climate facts and searching for viable solutions to our problem.

For anyone ignorant of those responsible for the denialism, his book is complete. His final words summarize his warning. “We will not, we cannot, wreck this planet. There is no planet B. It is perfectly fitted to us as humans because we evolved to fit it. It would amount to the gravest criminal act of irresponsibility to human history were we to throw it into fatal imbalance because of a wanton addiction to carbon.”  

I have used some of these very words in some of my books and columns. Our centuries of science have given us an appreciation of the Earth’s unique atmospheric greenhouse effect.

An arithmetic calculation of radiation balance demonstrates that our atmosphere makes a beneficial correction of 60 degrees F to our global surface temperature to which humanity, and our plant and animal support system, has evolved. Venus and Mars utterly fail in this requirement. While I favor continued research of our solar system and universe, the political and media attention to space travel is a distraction from the science. There is no defense of expenditures for a Mars human settlement or an impossible expedition to planets of other solar systems. “There is no planet B.”

We were exposed in further detail regarding the climate problem in the South by South Lawn (SXSL) on October 3, 2016, a discussion hosted by the environmental activist Leonardo Di Caprio of the documentary “Before the Flood”.

His guests were President Obama  and  Dr. Katherine Hayhoe, a top atmospheric scientist. Di Caprio stated his opinion that if you do not believe in science or empirical truth you should not be allowed to hold public office. We also discovered that President Obama has an accurate detailed familiarity with climate change science.

He stated, “Climate change is happening even faster than five or 10 years ago. What we’re seeing is the pessimistic end of what was possible in the ranges that had been discerned or anticipated by scientists, which means we’re really in a race against time. We can’t put up with climate denial or obstructionist politics for very long.”

In the discussion with Dr. Hayhoe, she warned, “We can no longer afford to deal with climate change later.”

There were no questions about climate change by moderators in any of the presidential or vice presidential debates in this hottest year of global warming on record. This neglect supports the view of climate deniers that this extremely dangerous environmental problem is relatively unimportant and of no voter interest.

I will not credit the efforts of contrarians to destroy our planet by listing the names of their champions, or the organizations and corporations who fund them. Nor will I continue to complain about those who are selfishly profiting from the use of fossil fuels. I have as well found it useless to chastise the media who support the climate denial cause by simply ignoring the subject of climate change. Instead, our citizens need to correct our inattention to the science warnings of imminent environmental disaster. We are risking the future of our offspring, and the lack of attention to the faulty governmental support of science, and of education in general, insures our continued degradation in international affairs; we will soon be followers of undeveloped societies. Give it some thought when you vote.