Dear Editor:
There are few subjects which can compete with environmental issues for the reporting of bias, propaganda, and junk science as news. Your story “Study: Humans to blame for warming of oceans” (6/3) is unfortunately a perfect example.
I’ll bet those scientists $1,000 that their prediction of a climate “several degrees warmer in fifty years” will be wrong.
Claiming to predict future climate changes based on only 40 years of data is weak science. Claiming that changes in ocean temperature must cause changes in global air temperatures is a massive leap of faith without any evidence. And you neglect to mention that some oceans are cooling in temperature while some have warmed.
It is not difficult to fit a computer model to prior data, but particularly in something as complex as climate there is no reason to believe that it will accurately predict the future. Other models have claimed to fit past patterns but then failed miserably for the following decades.
Katy Human only contributes to the confusion by claiming that only a few scientists disagree about climate change. Only a slight majority of climate scientists recently surveyed thought people had anything to do with global warming. The careers of many of the people who report alarming climate research results depend on finding the most frightening way to manipulate the data. They are trolling for funding. Good reporters should know better than to simply swallow the bait.
Ross G. Kaminsky
Boulder, Colorado
303/402 0050
[email protected]
Ross Kaminsky ([email protected]) is a fellow of The Heartland Institute.
