Warming Notes

This is a smattering of letters in the Washington Post regarding a recent column and coverage on climate gate.  There is a point where one must draw the line.

For the past decade we have been fed a diet of unrelenting propaganda attempting to link human produced CO2 with rising global temperatures.  I am generous to describe the hypothesis as weak and based only on a recent decade of actual noticeable warming (1988 - 1998).  Since then the climate gate geniuses by fiddling maintained the fiction that it had plateaued when it had decidedly fallen back.

I and everyone else have been relying on this data.  The plateau was wearing thin.

In fact the past two decades of warming and cooling pretty clearly shows no creditable linkage.  This is because if a decade of CO2 production arguably caused a rise in temperature, then a decade of substantially increased CO2 production was faced with a decline in temperature throughout, effectively delinking the argument.

If a ton of manure causes a strong smell, then two tons of manure is not going to produce a lovely scent.  Something else is happening.

Yes the Northern Hemisphere might well be entering its millennial warming cycle and it has not a thing to do with us at all.

Fire and ice in the global warming debate

Saturday, December 12, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/11/AR2009121103748.html

Regarding the Dec. 5 front-page article "In e-mails, science of warming is hot debate":

It was clear that reporters David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin "believe" in so-called climate change despite a few bows to the huge scandal that The Post finally noticed.

There may be global warming, or there may not. But what is clear is that there is no scientific consensus and there are no 2,500 trustworthy scientists to be "sticking with," as Carol Browner, the Obama administration climate czar, said last month.

There has been the attempted murder of scientific method. Politics has trumped science. Source material has been destroyed. Those who disagree or question have been suppressed. Any consensus that the well-meaning think they have reached has been based on false data and so is meaningless -- garbage in, garbage out. The farce in Copenhagen will continue.

And I thought that the Obama administration was going to restore science to its rightful place.

Linda Lyons, Alexandria

As a U.S. government climate researcher, I was pleased with the balanced view provided by David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin.

As the article accurately stated, all that the "Climate-gate" e-mails have uncovered is that "climate science is still science, with different researchers drawing different lessons from the same data." Scientists debate these conclusions, usually with some gusto, and through the process of scientific debate, a considered, scientific understanding develops.

None of the scientific arguments disproves the bedrock understanding of climate science or the climate changes since the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

We know, for certain, that Earth's heat is out of balance because of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. We know that ecosystems are moving, precipitation patterns are changing and glaciers are melting worldwide.

We know that Earth's Arctic region is in the grips of runaway heating, with rapid melting of sea ice, thawing of permafrost and a quickening flow of Greenland's ice into the ocean.

As climate scientists we are extremely concerned about the potential for truly unpleasant outcomes in the world that we are creating for our grandchildren. We also know that we humans can come together, internationally, to agree on solutions that will benefit us all. Examples include elimination of leaded gas and ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons and cleaning up our air and water.

We just need the will, in Copenhagen, here and around the world, to make the changes that will protect Earth's climate.

Peter Hildebrand,

Washington

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On top of your outrageous Nov. 25 editorial "Climate of denial," you published a letter Dec. 1 from a professor, Michael E. Mann, in which he advised your readers to consult http://RealClimate.org for objective analysis and comment on the Climate-gate scandal.

RealClimate is a propaganda effort run by Mann and several others at the center of the scandal. It is incredible that you would allow him to steer readers to this self-serving outlet without at least an explanatory warning from the editor.

Perhaps you would have referred readers to the White House press office during the last dark days of the Nixon administration to get the straight dope on Watergate.

Myron Ebell, Cheverly

The writer is director for energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

When will The Post realize that providing balanced coverage of important issues need not mean offering space to people with absolutely no expertise on the subject?

The only truth that I can find in Sarah Palin's latest diatribe ["Copenhagen's political science," op-ed, Dec. 9] is that the Copenhagen climate conference has become "politicized." Unfortunately, that's true largely because of the radical views of people such as Palin, who refuses to acknowledge that human-induced global climate change is already affecting the entire planet.

Palin need only visit the Arctic villages that are being lost to rising seas to understand that climate change is hitting home. Then she, and others like her, should get out of the way of the decision-makers who are trying their best to save us all.

Cat Lazaroff, Silver Spring