Lawrence Journal-World opinion section

To the editor:

An article in Scientific American explains that climate science results from a convergence of evidence. “Evidence like: the rapid increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases, land and ocean temperatures, sea level rise and acidification, more severe and frequent extreme weather, and resulting ecological stresses.”

These disparate sources of evidence all converge to a singular conclusion: Anthropogenic global warming is a real fact. What we are seeing in such a short time span is a rapid rise. We overcame our reluctance to believe in germ theory, the vaccination principle, evolution, plate tectonics and the big bang theory. This shouldn’t be so hard.

We just concluded the Paris Climate Accords to curb greenhouse gas and we finally have a worldwide consensus, including the Vatican. Now let’s contend with a U.S. Congress that is wearing the blinders of campaign contributors. If nations are going to put the brakes on climate change, the U.S. needs to overcome wishful denial and aversion to government playing a major role.

Thousands of scientists (97 percent) with the AAAS, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the Geological Society of America, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and most notably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have come together and agreed we have to do something now.

Fossilized thinking disregards physics and cherry-picks odd factoids unrelated to the big picture.