Sorry. Climate science is not a plot to put computer chips in your brain.

It’s clear from recent letters-to-the-editor that some citizens are having trouble sorting facts from conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to climate science.

Let’s say a specialist diagnoses you with a life-threatening condition. You don’t like it and seek other opinions. You see 99 other specialists until you find one who says you have nothing to worry about. Your move.

That’s roughly the proportion of climate scientists who think the facts tell us our earth has a life-threatening condition and we must cut greenhouse gases as quickly as possible. 

My first encounter with climate scientists came 30 years ago when I took a job researching what climate scientists were saying might happen in Montana. I was skeptical that our cold-water fisheries would decline as rivers and streams warmed, our forest fires would become uncontrollable “megafires,” our snowpack and winter sports economy would decline, and our farmers would increasingly encounter drought. Look around. These predictions are coming true.

I trust the science writer Bill McKibben, whose 1989 book, The End of Nature, asked if the world was getting hotter. McKibben is really good at synthesizing and then evaluating in clear language the published, peer-reviewed data. 

Read McKibben’s “By the Numbers” article published last week at substack.com. Last year set all-time highs for the three most serious greenhouse gases, CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide. It’s no surprise temperatures are also setting records, too. 

March was the hottest March ever recorded, the 10th consecutive monthly record. To McKibben, we’re entering the “crucial years” when we must fight the fossil fuel oligarchs and their disinformation.

It's also true that we’ve started to move in the right direction. Eighty-six percent of new power generation came from renewable (clean) energy. We built 473 gigawatts of clean energy from wind, solar and hydro. The key here is to make sure this great transition to clean energy picks up speed.

Other sources of reliable information are available locally, statewide, nationally, and internationally. Locally, look to livinginflathead.org, a website dedicated to preserving the best of the Flathead. Statewide, look to the Montana Climate Assessment (montanaclimate.org). Nationally, Congress has ordered a climate assessment every five years since 1988 (https://nca2023.globalchange.gov). Finally, there is the ongoing effort by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc.cu), whose sixth assessment by hundreds of climate scientists was published last year.

Do your homework. Don’t fall for the denialists. 

Jeffrey J. Smith is co-chair of 350 Montana and co-hosts a conversation at the climate café the third Friday of every month at the Flathead Lakers’ office in Polson, 9-11 a.m.