Climate change advances beyond prediction

Regarding “Climate change moving faster than predicted” [News, Jan. 12], why is anyone surprised? Twenty years ago, no one predicted that powerful forces would come together to make the situation worse, but now it has become self-evident.

For more than a decade we’ve seen the success of the “deniers.” The Cheney-Bush administration, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, the theocratic fundamentalists of the Republican Party, etc. – what then-first lady Hillary Clinton correctly identified in the late 1990s as “a vast right-wing conspiracy” – have achieved their goal of spreading disinformation for the sake of short-term profit.

The climate-prediction models were based on “suppose we do nothing,” but what we have today is “let’s try really hard to make it as bad as possible.” This approach was successful.

–James Freudiger, Seattle

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