In his op-ed of Dec. 8, Josh Hammer seeks to dismiss legitimate concern over climate change.

He tells us the tide is changing because recent polling shows “only” 60% (what I call a solid majority) of Americans believe climate change is mostly human-caused.

Hammer cites Bill Gates’ Oct. 28 blog post as evidence of a fading consensus. But Gates has not, in fact, changed his mind about climate change being a very serious ongoing issue. Instead, he believes that actions already taken, along with new technologies on the horizon, will limit the damage to an acceptable level. Gates says there will still be serious damage, but that it is acceptable only because there are other even worse problems facing the world’s poorest people . His post is not about changing beliefs, but rather the allocation of resources.

Hammer rejoices in the retraction of a study that had predicted a 62% decline in global economic output, saying if you remove the data that was found to be flawed that decline is only 23%. How can a decline of 23% be viewed as anything but disastrous?

Had it remained unaddressed, human-caused climate change would have eventually led to the extremely dire consequences that Hammer derides as alarmist.

The shifting public opinion that he applauds, if real, stems from two causes. The first is that progress already made has forestalled those consequences. The second is that concern is being displaced by the rise of so many other problems created by the current administration.

Phil Sutton

Ebensburg