Rejecting climate experts

I am always perplexed by people like Philip Thayer (“CO2 is beneficial,” Feb. 7) who dispute the truth of climate science. Those same people, we can assume, when diagnosed with cancer by a doctor who has been studying and practicing medicine for ten years, twenty years, even forty years as some climate scientists have been studying Earth’s bio-physical systems, will believe that doctor. Most of them will do anything they can to save their own lives. Even people who can’t yet feel a tumor, whose only evidence shows up on a scan, will believe their doctors and take action. Sometimes, they will take dramatic, expensive, action – beg their way into an experimental drug trial, go to Mexico for treatment not yet approved by U.S. regulators, take massive doses of chemotherapy, stop eating sugar, start eating greens. People are desperate to live.

Or maybe not.

Climate scientists are far more certain about the cause of climate change than the medical community is about the cause of cancer. And they are certain that the outcome is bleak for all life on Earth. Why would Mr. Thayer, or anyone else, discount climate professionals? Why is Mr. Thayer, why are all of us, not begging for clinical trials, for an experimental treatment? In the face of overwhelming evidence that the planet is heating up, why are we still arguing with our doctors?

Caroline Woodwell

Spokane