Franklin Maher, Charlottesville, VA:
You have our sympathies with regard to your flood. It was on the news here. And we certainly do make the connection between such a rain and climate change due to global warming. You are spot-on, though, about the oil lobby and their puppets in Congress. I would move, but where? And how? By spaceship. Your writings give me hope.
Laura Becker, Springfield, MO:
I grew up in upper Michigan -- our state -- and ended up here as a bride many years ago. I haven't been up in Michigan for years, but long-time friends tell me that climate change can be noticed even there. They say the beautiful birch trees I remember as a girl are having a hard time staying alive there. I am less concerned for myself at my age than I am for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to whom we are bequeathing a damaged planet.
Clark Fitzgerald, Arlington, VA:
I live right across the Potomac from those idiots you wrote about, kowtowing to the oil and coal people as if getting re-elected is the best thing that can happen to a person. I cross the river every day to go to work and raise the middle finger of my right hand in the direction of the Capitol. Those people would sooner asphyxiate themselves on the rotten atmosphere than levy a tax. The political system in this country needs a psychiatrist. Actually, an army of them along with some truth serum.
Barbara Reider, West Bloomfield, MI:
Just wonderfully said! We will never convince many right-wing Republicans as they do not value scientific knowledge!
Cynthia Chase, Laurel, MD:
I am so sorry to hear about this sorry mess -- the flood in your house, the trash in the street. What can be done? The world has gone mad. I remember signs in southeastern Ohio towns before the last presidential election: "Coalfire Obama." Southeastern Ohio, where the mountaintops are gone and the streams have no fish.
David N. Stewart, Huntington Woods, MI:
There is no data to show that weather events have been either more or less severe over past century. We don't have very complete data or for a very long period, so it is hard to come to any conclusion. But no need to be alarmed. There has been no atmospheric warming for over a decade, although this is disputed by some scientists. Rise in sea levels is different in different places, and is very small. The seas have been both higher and lower over the ages. Not alarming. I would support lowering carbon emissions, but not to the point that it would hurt the economy and employment.
Dale Siminson, Spokane, WA:
I'm a new reader of your insightful posts. A dear friend, a retired Episcopal priest, introduced me to your blog and I've become a reader. I, a former Episcopalian and Franciscan religious. Your posts, many of which I forward to friends, and "enemies" have opened up great conversations, and, ta-dah, strained conversations, especially with my right-winged, tea party friends with severe cerebral rectal inversions on so many issues.
Martha Gibbs, Rutland, MA:
Global Warming? Not here in Massachusetts this entire summer. If you like "cool," this was the place to be.
Diana Armes Wallace, Alton, MO:
A resounding THANK YOU. It matters not what beliefs one has, only that they are actually a decent 'being.' No animal craps in its living quarters, except the human race. We are polluting the only home we have and our demise is at hand. It pains me throughout my being to watch what others are doing to our land to themselves. There are terrible diseases that are infecting individuals throughout our world and this will spread. With the environment and the corresponding diseases (which I am sure are directly related) the bulk of humanity will be wiped out. I guess all those dogmatic zealots will actually tout the event as some 2nd coming, and off they will go! Maybe the few remaining, if any, will start again with our Mother Earth once again revered.
Gwendolyn K. Hetler, Litle Lake, MI:
And then there are the 7th Day Adventists who say we should not worry about global warming because the second coming is right around the corner . . . AGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Tracey Martin, Southfield, MI:
Great empires usually collapsed from either failure to apprehend or refusal to accept evidence of impending disaster. At the age of eighty, I do not see that climate change is much of a threat to me. And my neighbor advises me that my basement, in a Southfield condo built originally on landfill, did not flood. God does seem to work helter-skelter. I've been in Arizona several summers during monsoon but have never confronted rains quite of this year's magnitude, with more likely. In her seventeen years here, my Phoenix hostess recalls nothing similar either. Fortunately, washes are designed, naturally or by design, to deal with flash flooding. And the rains rushed past the house like mighty waters. Into the streets where careless drivers often have found themselves begging municipal rescue. They, too, having ignored the evidence and the warnings confronting them. Our next day's vehicular sojourn forced us to slow down for dips in the roads but only once did we encounter an actual closing (and I was treated to some splendid photo ops). The desert has turned green before and that is always nice, visually. No matter that it is not accustomed to this year's drenching. It will surely, however, be a while longer before the Sonora too is part of the temperate zone. But you have sounded with compelling clarity the sirens of alarum.
Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:
The problem with public failure to accept scientific evidence of climate change is neatly summed up in your comment, "The trouble is the belief thing." Instead of proclaiming what they "know" about anything, the public needs to be more open to scientific inquiry and willing to engage in critical thinking. That includes more than the weather.
