I've submitted several letters to the editor of West Newsmagazine in the past few years, and they recently published one! It was in response to an editorial they ran in their 2/1/12 issue. The editorial can be read by going here and navigating to page 6. My letter was printed on page 4 of the 3/21/12 issue. I've copied it below.
What makes this situation so rich is that the premise of the editorial -- since Einstein was proven wrong, climate scientists (and by inference, science itself) are fallible too -- is on very shaky ground. The claim about Einstein was based on the result of a study by a European research team. I wish I'd known it when I wrote the letter, but the study's results were questioned from the beginning, the team has admitted to a flaw in its technical setup, and the team's leader has resigned. More information here.
The issue is topical because climate change will be the subject of the next Green Speaker Series event, April 19 at 7 pm at Westminster Christian Academy. Hope you can come! More information .
Here's my letter to the editor:
Among other reasons, scientists publish their work in scientific journals to establish their credibility on a subject and to encourage peer review. If others can duplicate their work and get the same results, the science must be sound.
The 2/1/12 editorial, "A cold wind blows," points out that physicist Ivar Giaever recently resigned from the American Physical Society over the Society's stance that there is incontrovertible evidence to support global warming. Giaever has not, according to Google Scholar, published any work on global warming. Nobel winner though he is, this calls into question whether he's an expert on the subject.
The editorial also states that "our pesky planet has spent the last decade getting gradually cooler." Such a broad claim needs to be supported. Where does it come from? Was it published in a scientific journal?
A recent study, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, confirmed earlier studies that found the climate has been warming. What's interesting about this study is that it was funded in part by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, widely seen as a source of money for initiatives that have fought efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. Also, when the study began, project chair Richard Muller was skeptical that the earth was warming. Now he is convinced that it is.
Similarly, the vast majority of climate scientists are convinced that global warming is caused by human activity. The 2/1/12 editorial, like the 12/9/09 editorial, suggests that these scientists are corrupt -- fudging their work so as to receive funding. Is there something about studying climate that attracts or creates corruption?
If I were a scientist more interested in funding than the truth, I'd go where the money is -- to some of the wealthiest companies in the world: ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, all companies with very compelling reasons to assure us that using their products does not cause global warming.
To be a scientist, one must use the scientific method. Scientists have used this method to make things we trust our lives to everyday. We trust that bridges and buildings won't collapse when we're on or in them, that water coming out of the tap is safe to drink, that electric appliances won't shock us, that elevators we get into won't drop, that the brakes on our cars will work, that nuclear reactors won't melt down, that planes and helicopters won't fall from the sky.
Life is full of examples of implicit trust in science. So why don't we trust science when it comes to climate?
Do you know where the coat line of Florida"s Gulf coast was 12,000 years ago? 60 miles further out. Did you know our National Aerospace & Space Administration had posted the data from our satellites orbiting Mars has recorded a six degree WARMING since 1973? I ask you, where could this warming have come from other than the sun? Would you say man's influence? Emails from the "global warming nuts" that show they were conspiring to delete data and lie to the public is unforgivable. Trillions of dollars will be lost by ordinary people & TAKEN from people by unscrupulous "Carbon Trading Brokers" if this "global warming" nonsense is enacted into law. You will be taxed on the carbon dioxide you release from your lungs, car, furnace, everything, even methane from cows' waste. Carbon Trading is a big SCAM. There is NO SUCH THING AS CONSENSUS when it comes to science. Consensus is a politcal device. Science only deals with results that can be duplicated & verified independently and are NOT influenced by a "vote" of scientists.
In part, it states, "Relating planetary research results to terrestrial analogs is instructive and promotes public understanding, but this example provides a cautionary tale of misinterpretation in this age of politicized science. The dust cycle is the dominant short-term component of the Martian climate." As regards the influence of the sun, there have been several dozen papers published in recent years that have observed that the sun has actually been in a cooling trend for the past 20 years, while the Earth's surface temperature's continue to rise. This is one example: http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/464/2094/1387.abstract It says in part, "We have previously placed the solar contribution to recent global warming in context using observations and without recourse to climate models. It was shown that all solar forcings of climate have declined since 1987." A prior study by the same climate scientist concluded "that solar forcing has declined over the past 20 years while surface air temperatures have continued to rise". Lastly, forgive a quibble, but "consensus" is not democratic; it is by definition a "general agreement", or "the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned": http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consensus
There has NOT been a six degree warming of Mars since 1973 - the planet warmed up less than one degree because the reflectivity of its surface decreased due to windstorms sweeping sand over large areas of bare rock that had been reflecting heat. We know the sun is not causing the earth and other planets to heat up because we measure the suns radiation output and it shows we are in a period of low solar emissions where our atmosphere should be cooling but it is actually getting hotter, from our carbon dioxide. Of course there is consensus in science. 97% of climatologists agree the climate is warming based on factual data from weather stations all over the world. These results have been duplicated and verified many times. Scientists are much less driven by money than politicians and CEOs. What I really don't understand is how people reach such a state of obsession that they claim the kind of bizarre things like being taxed for breathing, and costing trillons of dollars for ordinary people. But nowadays we see many a rant spawned by all the propaganda being put out by big industry.