The page-one Outlook column ("Global Warming Issue Bears Close Watching," Oct. 13) complains that Americans are ignoring the impending crisis of global warming. The evidence, however, clearly shows that there is no global warming crisis and that Americans are right to turn their worries elsewhere.
Predictions of a greenhouse effect by computer models have been dropping fast as the models improve. In 1990 the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed global temperatures would increase more than 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 if we didn't make steep cuts in our use of coal and oil for energy. Today, the same groups says it might warm as little as 1 degree Celsius. The trend suggests that the fear of global warming has been overblown, if not misplaced entirely.
What about the predictions of melting ice caps and flooding in Florida? According to the U.N. experts, "there is no evidence that extreme weather events, or climate variability has increased in a global sense, through the 20th century." The facts simply do not support the idea of more floods, harsh weather or a global warming threat due to burning fossil fuels.
Jeffrey Salmon, Executive Director, George C. Marshall Institute Washington
*** Mr. Murray says "Global warming isn't just a fear; it's a fact . . ." Hardly. We have been recording temperatures for a little more than a century. Mr. Murray correctly reports that during that time average temperatures have risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit. However, on a planet where climate cycles range over tens of thousands of years, a hundred-year history is barely a blip, and certainly not a trend.
He makes a huge and distinctly unscientific leap when he attributes all global warming to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This completely ignores both the natural cycles of the earth's climate as well as the naturally occurring cycles of the sun. Carbon-dioxide emissions produced by human effort account for a meager 3%-5% of all carbon dioxide emissions. That being the case, if we were to stop all production, turn off our cars, shut down our factories, stop mowing our lawns and blowing our leaves, the net effect on global warming would be negligible at best.
Craig W. Menninga, Highland, Ind.
*** Allan Murray was off his usually astute form in his column on global warming. His analysis was flawed and banal.
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels would only slow increases, not reverse them. Anti-industrial Luddites and power-hungry international statists and their dupes can't afford to admit that we would have to brutally impoverish ourselves and our children in order to bring emissions down to levels they would accept, without the extensive development of nuclear energy, the only realistic non-carbon dioxide producing alternative to fossil fuel.
The bad news for Al Gore & Co. is that there is no global warming. The one degree increase in this century mentioned by Mr. Murray occurred before the carbon-dioxide increase began about mid-century. Since then, global temperature measurements have not significantly changed, and have even cooled slightly in the past two decades. This is terrible news for the gang that wanted so desperately to control our health care and now so desperately wants to control our energy use.
Don Vandervelde, Gig Harbor, Wash.
*** The Outlook column was an eye opener. I did not know that we, the human apes, producing about 1% to 2% of the carbon dioxide in the world were responsible for global warming. It makes one wonder which of the baboons in charge has become so arrogant to think we human apes can do so much to our world. Next they will have us controlling El Ni±o.
Robert H. Koehler, East Moline, Ill.
*** Now that Alan Murray has declared "Global Warming isn't just a fear; its a fact . . ." one would think that there remain no logical arguments to counter the global-warming fear mongers.
With all of the highly sophisticated electronic equipment developed in the past 25 years, it certainly has become more possible for scientists to measure temperatures world-wide. But how can they possibly know what the average temperatures were in the last century? Guess work? Computer models? How do they know what the temperatures were worldwide in the 1700's, 1800's and the early part of this century?
Using scientific gibberish and junk science, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore are generating or encouraging fear-mongering of this so-called problem and the usual media savants are willing to jump aboard to lead the juggernaught, meekly accepting the doctrines.
Paul M. Galant, Boca Raton, Fla.
*** You don't tell your readers that a practical large-scale amelioration to global warming is Nuclear Energy, which sends no emissions into the atmosphere, no earth-warming gases. Solar and wind power, fusion and cold fusion, and conservation may help, but they are so far from large-scale practicality that it is irresponsible to count on them.
Despite the public fears raised by the media, one should note that over the past 40 years no one has been harmed by the operation of the 400 nuclear power plants around the world built to U.S. standards (Chernobyl was not). Don't keep telling people about the insoluble global warming problem without at least letting them know that many energy experts believe nuclear power could supply more than half the world's coming energy needs, indefinitely, with no significant environmental effects.
Bertram Wolfe, Monte Sereno, Calif.
*** Historical data suggest that from 800 A.D. to 1200 A.D. the earth's climate was much warmer than it is today. This is when the Vikings settled Iceland and Greenland. They traveled in open sailboats with no cabins. They were tough dudes, but not that tough--it was warmer then. This is also when Greenland got its name. About 1200 A.D. the climate started to cool. The period between 1450 A.D. and 1850 A.D. is known by geologists as the "little ice age," a time of high precipitation and a much cooler climate, which caused many mountain glaciers to form throughout the world. The Greenland settlements were abandoned by the Vikings and hard times occurred in Iceland and much of Europe.
The "little ice age" is believed to have been caused by a reduction in sunspots. There were no recorded sunspots during the Maunder Minimum in sunspot activity between 1645 A.D. and 1715 A.D. Since the Maunder Minimum the sunspots have increased and the earth's climate has warmed.
James K. Snook, Geologist Emporia, Kan.
*** According to Engel Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen, two Danish solar-terrestrial physicists, we are currently experiencing a temporary warm blip, most probably caused by an unusually active sun. They found that the sun's activity better explains changes in the earth's temperature than the favored theory which focuses on man-made greenhouse gases.
If the Danes are right, then our obsession with man-made global warming may be leading us down a dangerous path. The costs of attempting to control the climate are likely to be large: Simply keeping emissions of carbon dioxide down to the levels generated in 1990 would induce a slowdown in the global economy that may be of the order of 1% gross productivity per year.
Julian Morris, Assistant Director, Environment Unit Institute for Economic Affairs, London
*** Warmer Atmosphere Grows Bigger Ice Caps
Your Oct. 23 editorial "By Faith Alone" is right on target. Weather is a "complex adaptive system," as that phrase is scientifically understood. Nothing, including global warming, operates independently. The polar ice caps are actually getting larger because of, you guessed it, global warming. This is causing the atmosphere over the poles to become more humid as the edges of the ice caps melt, which is resulting in heavier snow fall, which, because of the pressure, are forming additional ice at the caps. Thus the caps are getting bigger.
The political environmentalists do not consider the effects of actions like this over their natural cycle because they are interested only in branding new, specific near-term actions as either "good" or "bad" to suit their political agendas. Nature has a way of taking care of herself but this process does not fit neatly into the political time frames of those acting in their own selfish interests.
Perhaps you can educate your readers that science will once again find its voice as politicians debate this important issue.
Michael Raoul-Duval, Santa Fe, N.M.
Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of the author.
Copyright © 1997 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.