By Mary O’KEEFE

Climate change is real. Just to clarify – so we don’t get caught up in semantics – human-caused climate change is happening, has been happening and will continue to happen – and worsen – unless we recognize it as a problem before the water comes up to our … bottoms … and does not recede. 

In a survey in 2024 conducted by Peoples’ Climate Vote at https://peoplesclimate.vote/, 80% of people globally wanted their country to do more about climate change. The survey is touted as the largest survey conducted on climate change. According to organizers for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) by the University of Oxford and GeoPoll, 73,000 people who spoke 87 different languages across 77 countries participated in the survey. 

The survey also found that 43% of people around the world think extreme weather events have gotten worse, 78% of people want more protection for people at risk from extreme weather and 79% of people want richer countries to help poorer countries adapt. 

Regarding the question “Should countries work together on climate change even if they disagree on other issues, such as trade or security?” 80% of people in the U.S. answered “yes,” 18% said “no, they should work separately,” 0% said it doesn’t matter – no country should work on climate change and 1% said they “don’t know.” On the question of whether rich countries should give more to poorer countries to address climate change, 64% of the U.S. respondents answered they should help more, 5% said about the same, 28% said to offer less help and 3% said they didn’t know. 

That same survey found that people in the U.S. do not think about climate change a whole heck of a lot with the highest percentage – 30% – said they think about it a few times a year; however, when asked if they were more concerned about climate change [in 2024] compared to the previous year [2023], 51% said they were more concerned, 13% said about the same, 34% were less worried and 2% don’t know. 

It was interesting that in this survey the highest percentage of people, 26%, were not worried about climate change for the next generation and yet a strong percentage, 66%, wanted the country to strengthen its commitment to address climate change. 

Regarding the question of “How much should your country protect and restore nature? For example, by planting trees or protecting wildlife?” The answer from U.S. people surveyed was 76% wanted “a lot” of this protection, 20% said a little and only 3% said they wanted no protections at all. 

The link to the survey is at the bottom of this article. Look at how other countries view climate change … it is interesting. 

On Tuesday, 85 scientists – experts in the field of climate change – sent a 440 page rebuttal denouncing a recent climate report released on its website in July by the Dept. of Energy (DOE). 

“This report makes a mockery of science,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University and a co-author of the rebuttal. “It relies on ideas that were rejected long ago, supported by misrepresentations of the body of scientific knowledge, omissions of important facts, arm waving, anecdotes and confirmation bias.”

The DOE’s report is titled  “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” In one portion of the report, DOE stated the “Dust Bowl” disproved the reality of human-caused warming. Apparently, according to the report, poor agricultural management of the land and planting practices, although done by humans, had nothing to do with turning the Great Plains into a desert-like landscape. 

I am in the process of reading the entire report … highlighters in hand to address the many questions of the findings and conclusions. 

But one of the comments in the rebuttal did catch my eye. It compared the DOE’s report to what the tobacco industry did with their campaign to minimize the real risk of tobacco use. 

In 1954 the tobacco industry paid to publish the “Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” in hundreds of U.S. newspapers. 

“Recent reports on experiments with mice have given wide publicity to the theory that cigarette smoking is in some way linked with lung cancer in human beings. Although conducted by doctors of professional standing, these experiments are not regarded as conclusive in the field of cancer research. However, we do not believe that any serious medical research, even though its results are inconclusive, should be disregarded or lightly dismissed,” according to the Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers. 

It also stated that “in the public interest” the authors of the Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers wanted everyone to know that other doctors and research scientists had publicly questioned these experiments, which found their product harmful. And in fact there were many other causes of lung cancer and no proof that cigarette smoking was one of the causes. 

The public was also told this was just an over-the-top concern and being attacked is just something the tobacco industry has weathered over the 300–plus years that tobacco has “given solace, relaxation and enjoyment to mankind.”

More research was promised and the authors made certain all knew they had everyone’s best interest at heart. 

This was a campaign that worked. I remember pleading with my dad when I was younger not to smoke. He smoked Lucky Strikes and started when he entered the U.S. Air Force because a pack was given to him in his C-rations. From that point on it was a “smoke’ em if you got ‘em” kind of world for Dad and my uncles. They too were given cigarettes while serving in the military. My uncle also started smoking while serving in WWII. When he got stateside he became a cop and later a detective. He smoked from the minute he woke up until he went to bed – most of the time using one cigarette to light a new one. I don’t remember a meal, or anytime, when he didn’t have a cigarette in his hand or mouth. He would let it rest on the side of his mouth, against his jaw … the same place the first signs of his cancer were found. Other relatives who smoked ended up with emphysema. 

“The tobacco industry had a playbook, a script, that emphasized personal responsibility, paying scientists who delivered research that instilled doubt, criticizing the ‘junk’ science that found harms associated with smoking, making self-regulatory pledges, lobbying with massive resources to stifle government action, introducing ‘’safer products, and simultaneously manipulating and denying both the addictive nature of their products and their marketing to children…” according to the National Library of Medicine.

And now we know that cigarette smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals. At least 69 of these chemicals can cause cancer while other chemicals can interfere with the body’s ability to fight cancer. Smoking weakens the body’s immune system and damages or changes a cell’s DNA, which can lead to the creation of tumors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Smoking affects the person smoking and it affects those around them who breathe in that smoke, but climate change affects us all. Trying to wipe out conclusions from studies that have been done over decades, trying to put a “good for you” spin on the destructive effect of greenhouse gases and talking as if the increase in wildfires and floods, the more intense storms and the melting ice caps are just cyclical and not that big a deal is like putting a lit cigarette in all of our hands – those of both children and adults – and telling us its okay just take a puff, relax and everything will be fine. 

Survey on climate change can be found at: https://peoplesclimate.vote/.

Although there was a heat advisory on Wednesday, the rest of the week and into the weekend will see a cooling trend to high to mid-80s. There is a slight chance of rain today, Thursday, in the mountains but after today it looks pretty dry. The cooling should continue into next week as the marine layer keeps temperatures to average or a little lower than average temperatures of highs in the mid-80s.