LETTER: Cliff Mass plays it too safe in describing climate change effects

The atmospheric sciences professor ignores certainty in favor of obfuscation.

So [atmospheric sciences professor] Cliff Mass was here a couple weeks ago, delivering a lecture at the Port Angeles Library.

I read about it in the Aug. 19 PDN (“Few Peninsula Climate Change Effects – Yet”).

True to form, Mass played it very conservatively.

After all, he is the meteorological big-shot in the Pacific Northwest and would probably like to keep it that way.

It’s a common strategy among climate scientists: Promulgate doubt and uncertainty and thereby forestall political action.

I mean, near-term human extinction resulting from abrupt, catastrophic, runaway greenhouse gases is an unhappy outcome and remains unmentionable in polite society.

Clearly, Mass strives to tell the scientific truth where mathematical certainty abides.

Thus, while there may be no God today, there could be in the future.

But this weatherman is not providing the whole scientific truth, which is that human civilization is already caught in multiple runaway feedback cycles, such as exponential methane release in the Arctic and the inexorable melting of the sea and land ice at the poles (“Going Dark” by Guy McPherson, 2013).

Scientific rationality and restraint are weak tea for the howling night in the rain-soaked field where all the cows are black.

Mark Schrader,

Port Angeles

More in Opinion

Suzy Ames.
POINT OF VIEW: Together, we are resilient

I’VE LIVED IN this community for almost three years now. I know,… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: Bale bucking blues

DRIVING AROUND THE old hometown can make you feel old. Gone are… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: Survival of the wilderness pests

THIS IS A story about wilderness pests. It is told as a… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: The camas are blooming

THERE’S A LITTLE piece of history blooming now right along U.S. Highway… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: The call of the Swainson’s thrush

THIS MUST BE my favorite time of year. We’ve emerged from hibernation… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: The Olympic Peninsula driving guide

THE SIGNS OF the season are everywhere. The roar of the lawn… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: River birds decline, forecast the future for us

IT WAS DAYLIGHT on the river and no birds sang. It was… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: We’re opening the Upper Hoh Road

OFTEN WHILE GLIDING along the paved roads of the Olympic Peninsula, you… Continue reading

OUR VIEW: Community continues to support local journalism

LOCAL NEWSPAPERS CONTINUE to decline at a rapid rate, from an average… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: A family favorite skunk cabbage recipe

THE SKUNK CABBAGE is a swamp-dwelling harbinger of spring. Named for its… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: Fond memories of opening day

ONE OF MY many guilty pleasures is to look through copies of… Continue reading

Mike Glenn.
Take care of rural communities, hospitals

SAY WHAT YOU want about the efforts to downsize the government in… Continue reading