I HAVEN’T WRITTEN MUCH IN THIS SPACE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, partly because I don’t think I have an intuitive grasp of the scope and nature of the problem, and partly because fellow Herald columnist Jerome Page has done such yeoman’s work explaining and advocating on that issue that I haven’t felt the need to add my own voice. But just for a change, I thought I’d add my two cents this week.

First of all, the facts are pretty irrefutable: according to the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the temperature this century is expected to rise anywhere from half a degree Fahrenheit (assuming extremely aggressive remediation measures that are, to put it mildly, politically unlikely) to more than 8 degrees Fahrenheit under the most pessimistic scenario (assuming little or nothing is done to address the problem).

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree with these findings, so any claim that climate change is “controversial” or in serious scientific dispute is incorrect. If 97 percent of scientists agreed that it would rain tomorrow, wouldn’t you take an umbrella out the door with you in the morning? And as for the remaining 3 percent of scientists who dispute the facts of the case, I suspect that for some their suits are covered in petroleum industry pocket lint.

Speaking of which, economist and blogger Duncan Black wrote a column a couple months ago in USA Today that poked gentle fun at the idea, popular in conservative circles, that climate scientists are an unsavory cabal laboring to hide “the truth” from a deceived world. “(T)he idea that climate scientists are using global warming alarmism as a means to feather their own nests is common among climate change denialists,” he wrote. “This view seems to be based on the idea that there is an immense amount of grant money available to scientists who perpetuate the ‘hoax,’ that this grant money makes these scientists rich, and that this incredibly corrupt and dishonest group of people has decided that this is a more lucrative path than, say, convincing the billionaire Koch brothers, who have spent a lot of money supporting climate change denialism, to put them on their payroll to take the opposite position.

“This is an unlikely scenario. It isn’t clear just what the financial interest would be in supporting this supposed hoax science. Perhaps Big Solar is behind it all, but it strains credulity to imagine that Big Solar has more sway — and more financial resources — than Big Oil in this policy debate. As author Scott Westerfeld quipped, ‘Plot idea: 97 percent of the world’s scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires and oil companies.’ I suppose it could be true.”

Black makes a solid point there: If this really is all about grant money, can you imagine the mountain of cash that would await the scientist who could make a convincing case that global temperatures — for whatever reason — are likely to remain stable or decline over the next century?

The reality is this: Anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming is real — and really needs to be dealt with.

Part of my motivation for writing about this was the birth of my grand-niece a few months ago.

I remarked in a recent column that as the years of my own life have passed and I’ve moved further into middle age, I have gained an expanded sense of time. I was born almost 52 years ago, and so 50 years from now seems a lot more immediate than it used to when I was younger.

The first time I held my niece’s young daughter, it occurred to me that if she lives a reasonably healthy life and is lucky, she will live to see the early years of the next century. That realization helped me mentally connect to a future I will not directly experience. I suddenly felt a keen sense of obligation to do what I can to give her a world better than the one I was born into — better, for that matter, than the one she was born into.

I imagine her sitting in her parlor in her dotage in the year 2100, and I wonder: What will she remember about our generations from the perspective of a long life?

Will she feel gratitude that her parents and grandparents were brave enough to face a problem whose solution called for some sacrifice — the same kinds of sacrifice that Americans throughout history have been willing to make for the sake of their descendants? Or will she curse us for being too caught up in comfortable complacency and denial to take the necessary steps to combat a real and growing problem — and for whatever actions we were willing to do coming too late to keep the worst possibilities from coming true?

I think you and I owe it to her and her children and grandchildren to do what we can to address head on the problem of global warming. The future is coming no matter what we do; we have the power to choose what it will be like, and how we will be remembered.

Matt Talbot is a writer and poet, as well as an old Benicia hand. He works for a tech start-up in San Francisco.

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