Anthropogenic warming having real, devastating impact

Anthropogenic warming is having immediate and devastating impacts worldwide (Search “Effects of Climate Change Wikipedia.”). Yet Monte Heil (letter of July 26) berates those who voice concern about the problems it is causing. Unfortunately those harmed by climate change cannot so cavalierly ignore the severity of those impacts.

Having temporarily abandoned his harangue against the scientific consensus on AW, he now (August 25) returns to his criticism of scientific theories because of their lack of absolute certainty. In everyday parlance, “theory” commonly means an untested hunch or guess without supporting evidence. But in science, a theory has the opposite meaning. An established scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world based on an abundance of factual evidence. A scientific theory differs from a scientific fact in that a theory explains "why" or "how"; a fact is a simple, basic observation. The theory of gravity explains the fact apples fall from trees.

Mr. Heil, like most of us, prefers certainty over uncertainty. Science, although not claiming absolute certainty, regularly reduces uncertainty as our scientific knowledge advances. (Search “Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters.”)

Mr. Heil asserts that theoretical scientific concepts are “junk science.” Does he truly think the germ theory of disease, atomic theory, cell theory, quantum theory, etc. are junk science? If so, he is seriously misinformed about the scientific process and the role such theories have played in advancing our understanding of the workings of the natural world.

JACK DeBAUN

Dover