Dear Editor:

A frequent contributor to these pages reassures us that global warming is, in the memorable words of Vivek Ramaswamy, “a hoax.”

Selecting a particular city’s record high temperature (e.g., on July 12, 1936, it was 120 degrees in Seymor, Texas), he concludes from this that Maine’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change are baseless and “will be an expensive nightmare to dismantle and bury.”

I would like to introduce him to America’s foremost writer on global climate dynamics, Bill McKibben. In his latest New Yorker essay, “Hotter and Hotter,” he states, “As 2024 began, we’d just finished the most remarkable year in the planet’s modern climate history — 2023 had shattered every global for temperature, with researchers firm in the conviction that our planet had seen its hottest average temperatures in at least a hundred and twenty-five thousand years.”

And now, breaking news: “At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, Earth finished up its hottest year in recorded history .… The previous hottest year was 2023. And the next one will be upon us before long: By continuing to burn huge amounts of coal, oil and gas, humankind has all but guaranteed it.”

Planetary research confirms that 2024 was “the first year in which global temperatures averaged more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above those the planet experienced at the start of the industrial age.” (NYT, 1/10/25)

Like Vivek, our new Government Efficiency Czar, I would like to think these data are a conspiracy to victimize the fossil fuel industry; but the facts are too solid to brush aside.

Our local letter writer is correct when he states, “consensus is not science.” Flat-Earthers and Anti-Vaxxers demonstrate this truism; but hard facts and vetted conclusions by highly-qualified climate scientists exemplify the scientific process at its very best.

Bill Hammond

Boothbay