Response

As Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action was called out in the Parkersburg News Sentinel this morning, I will offer a retort here and pin it to the top of our page for anyone who may come to this public page looking around after reading Mr. Mullen’s nonsense.

Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action is not usually in the habit of responding to right-wing hysterical paranoia and propagandizing, but I feel it is necessary in this case to offer up something of actual substance to counter Mr. Mullen’s numerous falsities and lack of even rudimentary understanding of climate science.

Let’s begin with the most recent development from just this weekend. Day before yesterday, 13 federal agencies under the Trump administration released the 1,700 page Fourth National Climate Assessment – https://nca2018.globalchange.gov – showing in great detail that anthropogenic (human-caused) global climate change is, among other things, exacerbating and increasing the prevalence of heat waves, droughts, wildfires and strengthening hurricanes and other precipitation events and leading to more coastal flooding and inundation by rising seas. Please review at least the summary findings of the report at the link provided. The economic effects are and will be devastating.

Going back a bit further to October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of approximately 2,000 global scientists from 195 member countries who review and present the findings of the global climate science community periodically, released it’s Sixth Assessment, this time on 1.5C (centigrade) scenarios wherein the world keeps global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C above a preindustrial baseline. A World Meteorological Organization summary of the assessment can be found here – https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=5188

Regarding Mr. Mullen’s questioning of the scientific consensus on human-caused global climate change, I reference Dr. James Lawrence Powell, Ph.D. in Geochemistry and two-time appointee to the National Science Board by Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who conducted 5 literature reviews of all published, peer-reviewed scientific literature on global climate change between 1991-2015 (54,195 articles) and found an average consensus on the reality of human-caused global climate change of 99.94%.

It’s often said that there is a 97% consensus (still greater than the medical science consensus that smoking or chewing tobacco is harmful to human health) but that the “3%” should be acknowledged and the rest rejected. To refute this, I offer the work of Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University (known for her Evangelical Christian Faith) published in the journal of Theoretical & Applied Climatology. See here an article in Quartz on Hayhoe et. Al’s findings – https://www.google.com/…/the-3-of-scientific-papers-th…/amp/

So far as what Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action is doing in the schools, MOVCA has a team of 8 folks who have reached out to area public schools to educate students on anthropogenic global climate change and how they can make a difference at home, in their communities, in their state (West Virginia or Ohio) and even nationally and globally. To date, our educational outreach team has reached approximately 3,000 area students and we will continue this important effort.

We also have a good rapport and working relationship with the editorial staffs of the Parkersburg News & Sentinel and Marietta Times, but, as Mr. Mullen’s piece makes clear, these papers do not hesitate to publish the viewpoints of others and are not engaging in some kind of vast left-wing conspiracy.

Anthropogenic global climate change is settled science. Solutions exist for mitigation and adaptation, all that is currently lacking is the political will to go through with these solutions, many of which consist of or must be lead or supported by public policy. Mr. Mullen’s conspiratorial, willfully-ignorant, propagandistic and entirely politically-motivated rhetoric is not solving anything, and in fact is contributing to the problem even as hurricanes worsened by warmer ocean surface waters and warmer air holding more moisture have killed thousands; wildfires fueled by hotter, drier conditions and a wavier jet stream preventing relief have killed hundreds and destroyed thousands of properties and acres; and cities like Miami are flooding at high tide, just to name a few present effects.

Together, we can tackle anthropogenic global climate change and save lives today and in the future, but this empty-headed nonsense on display by Mr. Mullen can no longer be treated as a viable alternative viewpoint to what is a virtually unanimous global scientific consensus or as an alternate reality to what is happening before our very eyes.

Please share widely!

#SavetheGrandchildren
#ClimateActionNow