Dear editor,
If I may counter letter-to-the-editor writer Terry Hansen’s Oct. 1 “Writer finds conservative attitude on global warming ‘objectionable’,” two items in the letter are technically correct – Trump did say ‘Global warming is a hoax,’ but that was back in a 2012 Tweet (Trump did not elaborate). Second, writer Hansen is correct that the climate debate (or basic lack thereof) isn’t about science — it’s about the role of government.
“Hoax” is of course a far too simplistic label, there are layers of complexity to it. PhD-level climatologists / atmospheric physicists / other experts on temperature data gathering/analysis heavily dispute the so-called ‘settled science’ which writer Hansen alludes to. They additionally point out that ‘consensus opinion’ has never validated any science conclusion in the history of the Scientific Method. It could be said that innumerable science societies / scientists held the consensus for centuries that the continents were fixed in place … until the 1950s when deep dives to the mid-Atlantic ridge proved the plates move apart. All that ‘science consensus,’ out the window with essentially one report.
I, too, encourage reading “The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism,” but very likely in contrast to writer Hansen, I also encourage reading of science-based assessments arguing against what the author of that report, Dr. John Cook (no relation to me) wrote. This is what I meant above about the lack of debate. A significant portion of the public is not aware of the skeptic scientist side of the issue because major news outlets exclude such skeptics from their news reports. At my GelbspanFiles blog, I quantify the ongoing bias of the PBS NewsHour’s exclusion ratio, at the present time it is 124 scientists associated with the IPCC /NASA / NOAA side to zero from the skeptic side, dating back to their 1996 broadcast segments.
If anyone does hear about skeptic scientists, it’s baseless slurs about them being on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).” The above-noted Dr. John Cook – with his Doctorate of Philosophy – based his own accusation in his PhD thesis on that exact phrase, which turns out to be from a unsolicited proposal sent to a nonprofit coal association’s public rations campaign, which they rejected outright. That fact did not prevent Al Gore from spelling out a slight variant of that memo phrase full screen in his 2006 movie, and later claiming in 2008 that it came from Exxon. I detail the fatal problems at massive length surrounding the “crooked skeptics” accusation at my GelbspanFiles blog. Simply put, the “crooked skeptic scientists” accusation may be one of the biggest political hoaxes out there.
Personally, I find it objectionable that conservatives stand accused of rejecting “well-substantiated new knowledge” when it is apparently liberals who are the ones rejecting debate about whatever knowledge is available. What conservatives find intolerable is proceeding with policy that is based on emotion-driven feelings rather than full discussion of the actual situation. “Exxon knew” that use of fossil fuel caused global warming as far back as the 1970s?? That is not possible. During that time when I was growing up, I distinctly remember how the news discussions concerned the prospect of global cooling. Enviros claim that notion stems from just one single magazine article; assertions such as that from the enviro side are an example of outright disinformation.
Prudence dictates that public policy / governmental regulation must be based on ALL of the evidence, not half of it which is undercut by what its proponents choose to exclude. Skeptic scientists should be praised for their well-meaning intentions to warn the public about scientifically unsupportable government overreach.
Russell Cook of Mesa, Arizona