Allen Templeton
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
It's incredibly hard to believe that there are "educated" people who still question the scientific reality of climate change and its likely disastrous effects if we don't act responsibly.
Every convenience known to man from automobiles to airplanes to cell phones has come to us through the efforts of science, not to mention the trip to the moon. It is hands down the best means we have to save this planet from possible destruction, or at the very least to save our shoreline cities from being flooded due to melting of the ice caps.
It's been said, "Well, science has been wrong before about climate predictions."
I don't doubt that for one minute. Science doesn't deal with "absolutes," it deals with "theories" at best, and those theories are tested constantly because scientists know that new information and new testing can always affect previous "theories."
From our HS science books: The scientific method is an iterative, cyclical process through which information is continually revised. It develops knowledge through the following steps, in varying combinations or contributions.
Observations (definitions, and measurements of the subject of inquiry)
Hypotheses (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of observations)
Predictions (inductive and deductive reasoning from the hypothesis or theory)
Experiments (tests of all of the above)
Constant re-experimentation
Each element of the scientific method is subject to constant peer review for possible mistakes, and that process continues until the most current "theory" is arrived at.
So yes, scientific predictions may seem to have been wrong before, but information is continually updated and applied, and that's how science arrives at the best predictions possible.
So, please take climate change seriously. At the rate we're currently moving to offset the changes, lives and homes will continue to be lost due to rising shorelines, fires, floods and hurricanes but at a much-elevated rate. You may think that there is little that you as an individual can do to make a significant impact, but what you most certainly can do is to is to contact your congressmen, and encourage them to support non-partisan climate change legislation. If you don't know how to do that, visit projectgrandcanyon.com.