Invitation and Warning

At present I'm still up to my neck (my eyeballs, actually) with an EMR project at work, so I don't have much extra time to devote to blogging or to Facebook. But today is Sunday. My grandson, Ian, spent the night with me last night, and my daughter, Rachel, and I took him to church with us this morning (Debby being out of town). This afternoon is a time for relaxation and reflecting on things that are important.

It happens that I have been reading The Inquisition of Climate Science by James Lawrence Powell. In a way I am learning nothing new, because I have been convinced that global warming is real and that human activity (specifically the burning of fossil fuels) is by far the predominant cause since long before I put together the list of links about the Science of Global Warming in August, 2011. In other words, Powell did not need to persuade me of the truth of climate change (because I was already persuaded), but what Powell's book has done is help me better understand the forces arrayed against us, forces that are doing everything they can to muddy the waters and convince the populace that there is nothing to this threat. This, my friends, makes it a moral issue.

Then this morning I read a column, On Climate Change, Money Trumps Common Sense, by Bill Moyers, a journalist whom I have long admired. In this article Moyers quotes a publication of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration publication (via the Washington Post) revealing that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Barrow, Alaska, reached 400 parts per million (ppm) this spring. This may not be all that surprising, but it is alarming nonetheless.

It is time to wake up, friends, long past time. So here is an invitation and a warning. The invitation is this. Please engage me in discussion. I will be forthright, but I will not attack you personally, nor will I belittle you. In fact, if you think I am overlooking important information, I am happy to read and study anything you bring to my attention. But please engage me. This is too important not to discuss civilly and intelligently. Engage me here on this blog; engage me on Facebook; engage me by email.

The warning is this. From here forward, I no longer view discussions of climate change and global warming as political (and therefore to be avoided as far as possible). I now view this topic as one with moral and spiritual implications to be discussed openly and often. If this makes you uncomfortable, please feel free to "un-friend" me or at least "unsubscribe". (I won't be not be offended and probably won't even know.)