A few small, eccentric enclaves of nonbelievers are still convinced that the Earth is flat and that man never landed on the moon and that Elvis never died. Facts after facts, however, are exposing the argument that global warming is a "hoax" as a dangerous ploy to protect industry from cleaning up its act.
Two indisputably credible scientific organizations—NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—delivered reports last week showing a continuing warming trend created in no small part by human-created gas emissions into the air.
One report has 2010 tying 2005 as the warmest on record.
Since scientists began record keeping in 1880, global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average for 34 consecutive years. For those whose homes and businesses have been wiped out by floods, this fact is not surprising. The year 2010 was the wettest on record in global averages.
The likes of U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, the scoffer-in-chief of climate change, continues his "hoax" propaganda, thus revealing a sick blindness to reality and ably serving industries that would rather let the planet be damaged than spend profits on remedies for gas emissions.
He and others in Congress who have sided with industry rather than the environment should hark to the warnings of Daniel Weiss, climate expert for the Center for American Progress: "To reject this latest evidence is like ignoring strange spots on a chest X-ray and continuing to smoke."
