The Jambar
In 2025, the Advanced Ohio Higher Education Act deemed climate policies an issue professors should not indulge. This editorial, however, is less about policies and more about the denial of a changing climate itself.
Climate, per Merriam-Webster, is defined as “the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation.”
As the National Centers for Environmental Information states, weather is the mix of daily events that happen in the atmosphere. Climate is simply the average of these events over a 30-year period.
Now, if it can be agreed that weather patterns change daily, even hourly, do they not also change over time — say several years? The issue with climate change denial is that it is lacking logically and scientifically per definitions.
Some people would say, “Science can be wrong” or that, “We shouldn’t let science dictate our lives,” but science is the study of the natural world. Scientists in various disciplines are not telling us how they feel, but what they have observed in the world and society.
To the point of climate denial, some people often lament the severity of the seasons when compared to their childhood. That, technically speaking, is climate change. Several climate patterns overlapped in their youth, and they can currently recognize certain differences in weather patterns.
Why are some people determined to deny the existence of climate change? Is it because human contributions to the change are now being highlighted? Though there could be several rationals for the denial, this reason is worth considering.
Denial is a completely understandable response when being told that people’s actions, those they may have thought harmless, have overarching negative consequences.
The issue of climate change, however, is not one that will disappear if ignored. It will actually worsen.
Often conflated with climate change itself is global warming. Global warming is one aspect that influences the change, and it is here that human influence is apparent. Through the burning of fossil fuels and the Industrial Revolution as a whole, human beings have contributed to global warming, thus contributing to climate change.
Do not be mistaken — the climate would have changed regardless, but as the National Academics of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine states, the natural processes alone do not explain the rate of change.
The United Nations Climate Action website even lists several ways humans contribute to climate change, through activities such as transportation, food production and powering buildings, among others.
Things no one would have thought as negative are in fact thus. That is not to say that people must berate themselves for simply trying to exist or deprive themselves of certain conveniences. However, being cognizant of the effects of one’s actions is the first step towards bettering conditions.
If climate change is simply the change in atmospheric conditions over a 30-year period, something that would have happened without human intervention but has been accelerated by said intervention, why is discussing climate change seen as a political issue?