On climate change, there aren’t ‘two sides.’ So why do some feel otherwise?

“Do you believe in climate change?”

Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland (R)
 reaches out to shake hands with new U.S.
Ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft during a meeting
at the Lester B. Pearson Building in Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada October 23, 2017.

Kelly Knight Craft, the newly minted U.S. ambassador to Canada, did not take long after arriving in Ottawa to make waves. The same day she presented her credentials to Canada’s Governor General Julie Payette, she sat down for an interview with a CBC journalist where she was asked this question.

“I think that both sides have their own results, from their studies, and I appreciate and I respect both sides of the science,” she replied. Her alarming answer paid lip service to the toxic myth that there is a legitimate debate over the reality of climate change, and that both sides deserve equal consideration—as if there were “two sides” to gravity, and whether we fall or float when we step off the cliff somehow depends on our perspective, our opinion, and our politics rather than on the facts.

I’m a Canadian climate scientist living in Texas, the heart of oil country. I spend a lot of time talking to people who share Craft’s perspective, and am often asked if I believe in climate change, too. My answer to them is no. I crunch the data myself, I run the models, and the evidence is clear. I don’t believe in climate change—I know it’s real.

Read Katharine Hayhoe’s story on Maclean’s - “On climate change, there aren’t ‘two sides.’ So why do some feel otherwise?”