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Readers write: True rebellion?, weather patterns

Letters to the editor for the Jan. 2, 2017–Jan. 9, 2017 weekly magazine.

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Bruce Robinson/UGC/AP
This image made from a video shows a tornado on Aug. 24, 2016, in Kokomo, Ind.
  • By Rick Soule Monitor reader
  • Andrew Townsend Monitor reader

True rebellion?

Regarding election coverage in your Nov. 21 issue: Why the insistence that Donald Trump’s victory was a voter rebellion when more than 93 percent of incumbents were returned to Washington? That is hardly “draining the swamp.” 

Trump’s winning of the White House is unprecedented and historic, but as witnessed by the congressional results, certainly not a widespread voter rejection of the status quo.

Rick Soule

South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Weather patterns

Regarding the Dec. 2 article “Is climate change behind the rise in extreme tornado outbreaks?” (CSMonitor.com): An ice age and a blizzard, a record drought and a hot summer day, the monsoon rains and a flash flood: climate and weather. Are each of these dual phenomena related? Sure. 

Does one predict the other? Not necessarily. Therein lies the difficulty with linking severe weather events, such as tornadoes, to climate change. 

Sure, climate change may increase the likelihood of such events, at least statistically, but that does not imply predictability. And linking climate change and weather is difficult to demonstrate empirically.

Climate change is a very real, human-driven phenomenon with potentially catastrophic and far-reaching consequences. However, we must be careful as scientists and journalists to not push the envelope too far, too quickly. 

Weather patterns, as any meteorologist would tell you, are incredibly hard to predict. This is especially true of severe weather, which by its very nature consists of rare and sudden events. The United States already has an incoming administration that doubts the legitimacy of climate change. Numerous articles such as this, while accurate, may delegitimize climate change in some minds. The last thing we need in this political atmosphere is to provide more ammunition to climate change skeptics.

Andrew Townsend

Austin, Texas

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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