Ohio State Marion Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences, Joel D. Barker, Ph.D. was recently interviewed by The Columbus Dispatch in an article entitled, “2014 sets record as Earth keeps heating up,” and published Saturday, January 17, 2015.
Excerpts from The Columbus Dispatch article - Written by Laura Arenschield
Joel Barker, an assistant professor in OSU’s School of Earth Sciences who has researched climate change, has a suggestion for those who believe that climate change is a natural phenomenon unaffected by humans: Recognizing that the world is getting warmer and understanding that something needs to be done about it are more important than arguing about the cause.
“I always sort of fall back on the burning-house analogy,” he said. “If your house is on fire, the first thing you do is you try to do something about the fire. You don’t sit around saying, ‘Who started the fire?’
“If we’re willing to just keep on going as we are, of course, the damage is just going to get worse and worse and worse as time goes on. Or we can note that the damage has been done, and we can try to limit the extent of that damage in the future.”