When will we move away from fossil fuels?

In any debate between observable data and wishful thinking, data will win. Evidence of this: One of the major scientific voices questioning climate change has changed his mind.

Last week, Richard Muller, University of California-Berkeley physics professor, one of the few credible scientists still unsure about global warming, gave testimony at a U.S. House of Representatives. For years, Muller has questioned the accuracy of the temperature monitoring stations used to model evidence for global warming and has been doing his own independent research. (If you can call research independent when it is heavily funded by the Koch Brothers, who promote continued fossil fuel dependence.)

To the surprise of many and dismay of some, his findings parallel those of the rest of the scientific community. His conclusion: “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by other groups. The world temperature data has sufficient integrity to be used to determine global temperature trends.”

And those trends are alarming. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now

392 ppm, while plant and animal life as we know it developed in a world with a maximum 350 ppm. Natural feedback mechanisms are accelerating the upward trend, and initial changes are already showing up, as expected, in extreme weather events worldwide.

The question is not whether we are going to move away from fossil fuels, but when. The more we fiddle now the more likely our grandchildren's world will burn. Is this the inheritance we will give them?

Elisabeth Robbins

Marion