Dear Editor:
On June 12, USA Today ran a seriously misleading story under the byline of Dan Vergano titled “The debate’s over: Globe is warming.”
Readers were told that big corporations, politicians, government scientists, and religious groups “agree that the problem is real.” Unfortunately, Mr. Vergano failed to interview any scientists convinced of just the opposite.
As publisher of a monthly newspaper on science and the environment for the past nine years, I can report that the debate is far from over. For example, Dr. Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, recently reviewed 1,000 recent studies and reports on the subject of global warming and found only one-third of them backed the view that human activity was a significant influence on global climate and only 1 percent did so explicitly.
Dr. Dennis Bray, of Germany’s GKSS National Research Centre, recently surveyed international climate scientists, getting responses from 530 climatologists in 27 different countries. More climatologists “strongly disagreed” than “strongly agreed” that climate change is mostly attributable to humans.
And of course, the fact that climate alarmists hate more than vampires hate daylight: 17,000 scientists signed a petition drafted by The Oregon Institute of Science & Medicine declaring that man is not a significant cause of climate change.
Mr. Vergano quotes scientists in his article, but what an odd lot they are! Every one has already discredited himself on the topic of global warming.
James Hansen is the notorious alarmist who launched the global warming scare with his congressional testimony during the summer of 1988. Don Kennedy is the editor in chief of the journal Science who has allowed political science and bias to pervade the pages of a once esteemed journal. Michael Mann is the author of the “hockey stick” diagram purporting to show the history of global temperatures, but which statistics expert Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph, exposed as a scientific fraud.
Contrary to Mr. Vergano’s thesis, the scientific basis of the global warming scare is melting away. Its critics are credible and respected scientists, such as Sallie Baliunas, Frederick Seitz, S. Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling, and many more. They haven’t changed their views, however inconvenient they may be to the alarmist wing of the environmental movement.
Readers interested in a more accurate report on the current state of climate science should check out an inexpensive and popular book titled Skywatch West: The Complete Weather Guide, by Richard A. Keen, a real climatologist. Besides explaining everyday weather phenomena in clear and accurate terms, he gives a detailed and up-to-the-minute overview of the global warming debate … and concludes that any warming about to occur is likely to be trivial.
Joseph L. Bast
Palatine, IL
312/377-4000
[email protected]
Joseph L. Bast ([email protected]) is president of The Heartland Institute.