by Louis Schwartzkopf, Ph.D.
Kudos to The Mankato Free Press for its May 16 editorial , in which it notes that the extreme weather in our region and the country this spring is another indication that our climate is changing and exhorts our policymakers to pick up the pace in fighting climate change.
Climate change isn’t going away. The biggest driver is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. The more carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, the more violent and erratic our weather will be. Once the carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, it stays there for centuries, until natural processes pull it out. This means that the weird weather we are having is already baked in for a long time to come and will only get worse, until we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to zero.