Thank you Senator Whitehouse

Thank you Senator Whitehouse for at least attempting to encourage greater science literacy on Ed Achorn's crusading editorial page which can only comfort the ignorant and the duped on this matter of catastrophic climate change.

The very heading of the letter makes this point: corrupt scientists, he thinks, are "engaged in a fraud against the public." He compares the professional  climate change skeptics to the tobacco industry's despicable hirelings when smoking was positively linked to cancer. Senator Whitehouse might be amused to learn that there is a book to be found at the Cranston Public Library titled : "The Republican War on Science."

The late popular science writer, Isaac Asimov, was aware of their war on science way back in the 1980s: The Christian Right was attacking Darwinian evolution once again and wanted "equal time" for the nonsense called Creationism. Asimov pointed out that evolution was now a fact not a theory. And the controversy was outside of science. Read his essay "The Armies of the Night." It is relevant to the climate change denial today.

“‘X’ Stands for Unknown” is a collection

of non-fiction science essays including 

"Armies of the Night" written by 

Isaac Asimov in 1983. Amazon link.

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com