Editor,
I want to thank The WORLD for regularly publishing Roger Hill’s “Weathering Heights” column, which I look forward to reading. In addition to listing monthly local weather statistics, he explains in detail the weather we are experiencing as well as what is in store for the near-term future.

The greatest service he provides to readers, however, is putting the ever-increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) measurements in perspective, especially in how it relates to extreme climate events that are more frequently occurring around the world. This week he highlighted a scientific report on the alarming local extinctions of hundreds of various planetary species as they struggle to adapt to climate change or try to escape their rapidly warming habitats. He also informed us about other even more dangerous greenhouse gasses such as methane, which, up till recently have been locked up in arctic land and sea beds, but are now being released by warming temperatures and the thawing permafrost.

Ironically, I read this latest column on the same day that Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, was testifying at his Senate Confirmation hearing. It is now widely known that this world’s largest oil company had been secretly funneling millions of dollars to groups denying the causes of climate change, even as ExxonMobil’s own scientists in the 1970s were raising a red flag about the potential long-term damage continued burning fossil fuels could do to life on Earth.

I will take Roger Hill’s sober weather data and his wake up call conclusions any day over Trump’s sneering dismissal of climate change science as a hoax.

Fletcher Dean
East Calais, VT