Letter from Ron Bishop

Kudos for ‘Citizen Science’ Column

I applaud you all at Iron String Press for continuing your column series “Citizen Science.” I have greatly appreciated the insights of Jamie Zvirzdin these last three years, and now look forward to more from Roberta McLain and the other two writers taking up the baton for the next months and years. As Isaac Asimov wrote in his 1970 review of “Geology of the Moon,” “There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.”

The Earth’s average temperature from 2023-2025 exceeded 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures (the “orange line” limit of the Paris climate accords), and carbon dioxide in our atmosphere surged past 430 parts per million (up from 280 ppm in 1750 and 325 ppm in 1970). It’s important for us to ponder that if we keep doing what we’re doing to this natural world, our children and grandchildren are as good as cooked. Helping us all understand how this works is a major public service, so thank you for offering great science writing to readers of “The Freeman’s Journal!”

Building from the column’s header, I also want to applaud the many citizen scientists who volunteer all over Otsego County: teams monitoring stream water quality, culvert integrity, invasive species spread, natural species decline, trail maintenance, and more. (Here’s a shout out to my Red Creek monitoring partner, Morgan Freehafer.) Folks who want to learn more about—and better yet, join—these efforts should contact the Otsego County Conservation Association at occainfo.org

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

Ron Bishop
Cooperstown