I was reading my local newspaper on Monday afternoon, and one reader has written in to sharply criticize the Nobel committee for awarding Al Gore their prestigious award. He went on to say how GW (Global Warming) was a hoax and liberal propaganda. Having studied climatology in college and been an avid fan of research on it since those days, I felt obligated to respond. My response was printed in 'The State' today:

"It never ceases to amaze me just how blissful ignorance must really be. Christopher Lampman must have been on cloud nine when he wrote his letter about how Al Gore’s recent award has tarnished the Nobel Peace Prize.

At what point will society wake up and realize that our environmental issues are not a political problem, not some left-wing tree-hugging propaganda and not an economic constraint but a very real, very serious world problem?

How daft are we as a society that the pieces can’t be logically put together in our minds?

You extract tons of carbon from the Earth, burn it and expect its presence in the atmosphere to mean nothing?

Regardless of the Earth’s natural cycles of warming and cooling, man has tipped the scales, and eventually we’re going to see how far. The evidence of warming we see today is thanks to the ignorance of two generations ago.

This climate “sham” is about to become very real indeed for future generations. Whatever happened to environmental responsibility and taking care of our only home? As Winston Churchill said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.”

It’s about time we faced that truth. Kudos to Mr. Gore for his efforts.

JOHN DERRICK"

I sincerely hope that we can all move beyond this stage of wearing blinders. It's easy to get caught up in the storm of hype, no doubt. But it's also foolish to ignore the findings of thousands of scientists. While some scientists will always be about fame, glory, and headlines - there are countless others who are very serious and dedicated to their work. To ignore their findings is incredibly ignorant on our part - and eventually, it'll be downright stupid. We take so many things on faith in this world - yet we ignore and dispute the evidence of science until it's so blatantly clear we can no longer deny it. I will never fully understand our species... but, after all, we did once live on a flat planet that was the center of the universe.