Climate change isn’t real…at least not the way we look at it.

Yes the climate is changing, but the climate has always been changing.

There have been approximately five ice ages throughout Earth’s history. This is significant because these were all natural cycles of the Earth’s climate, and they weren’t caused by the olluting factories of the energy industry because they did not exist billions of years ago.

It is also important to distinguish between weather and climate. Weather is what the conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, while climate is how the atmosphere behaves over relatively long periods of time, according to NASA.

No, the reason why it flurried on Monday in Evansville is not because the climate of the entire planet went through a dramatic change.

The weather changes all the time, every day in fact, and many times it is due to natural weather patterns caused by winds and storms. Sometimes changes in the weather are caused by man-made pollution through power plants.

For instance, power plants produce large amounts of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, which are the pollutants that cause acid rain, when they burn fossil fuels like coal to create energy.

Regulation of this industry is necessary, but the planet is not going to instantaneously combust because of pollution.

Also, what happened to the global warming argument?

For years people have argued that the Earth is becoming increasingly warmer leading to melting ice caps and rises in sea level. They are right. The Earth is getting warmer, but not by as much as you would think.

The average global temperature on Earth has only increased by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880 according to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

Is this why the Paris Climate Agreement is so important? Is this why former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called climate change the single greatest threat facing our planet? A 1.4-degree change in 138 years?

If you woke up tomorrow morning and there was a 1.5-degree change in the temperature, would you cite climate change or global warming?

Just over six miles away from USI’s campus sits Vectren’s A.B. Brown Generating Station, a four-unit, 700-MW coal burning facility. There’s no doubt that the facility has a negative impact on air quality in the area, but its effect on global climate change is very minimal.

Being outraged at Vectren or the energy industry, in general,isn’t worth your time. Trying to shut their facilities down is an even worse idea.

Vectren, like many other energy companies, is working on ways to reduce pollution and our society should focus more on transitioning to cleaner energy sources rather than forcing companies to completely shut down their operations.

Keeping our planet clean and healthy is important, and we do need to make sure that we work to improve and not destroy Mother Earth.

But climate change is not the single greatest threat facing our planet. It would take thousands of years for energy pollution to cause any significant change to the climate, and with the industry constantly changing, who knows if this will even be an issue 100 years later.

Enjoy the weather this Earth Day because the climate isn’t changing anytime soon.