To the Journal editor:

Are you familiar with the Greek tale of Kassandra, the Trojan Horse, and the Fall of Troy? Troy was a rich and powerful city whose walls were impenetrable.

Kassandra was a prophet. The God Apollo was attracted to her and as an enticement to romance, he granted her the gift of seeing the future clearly. She rebuffed his advances. In retaliation, he vindictively cursed her prophecies. Her prophecies would be accurate, but no one would be capable of believing them.

You might not know it but Kassandra warned the citizens of Troy of saboteurs in the Wooden Horse. No one listened. Troy was destroyed.

In 1947 scientists, worried nuclear war could incinerate the world, generated a report called the “Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.” They created an imaginary clock called the Doomsday Clock. Midnight was doom and the closer to it, the more risks they perceived. The farthest from midnight and safest we have been is 17 minutes. Today we are at 100 seconds generating an emergency warning. Why?

First: Politicians have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing nuclear weapons to erode.

Second: Scientist’s warnings that climate change will destroy our benign atmosphere have been ignored far too long.

Third: Putin has discovered a Trojan Horse. Through social media he has created doubt and cynicism in our minds about our climate scientists, our journalists and our government. The saboteurs have infiltrated our minds and we no longer make decisions based on evidential argument.

As a longtime student of climate change and of tobacco company lies, I have witnessed the delegitimization of knowledge and scientific consensus.

How do we protect ourselves? How do we return to the Age of Reason? How do we pull the hands back away from midnight? Do you defend truth? Investigate claims before passing them on? Dig to see who said something? Research the organization disseminating information?

When negotiating with foreign governments negotiators wisely insist on verifiable agreements. Should we not be just as deliberate when accepting a critical statement?

When we work hard to find and defend truth, we inoculate ourselves from foreign viruses. If we do not work to learn we lose our ability to detect lies. Democracies rely on truth, dictators on lies.

If we continue the present course, unable or unwilling to understand our climate scientists, they become modern day Kassandras. And, we risk the fate of Troy. https://thebulletin.org/ doomsday-clock/