Your page-one article on global warming illustrates how a politically motivated debate in the name of the environment takes on a life of its own ("Global-Warning Debate Gets No Consensus in Industry," April 16).
The reactions of Frederick Palmer, CEO of Western Fuels Association, as described in the piece are illustrative of the destructive influence of mindless government intervention in the free market. Mr. Palmer, whose interest is in the economic use of massive coal deposits to support the U.S. economy, has to confront the issue directly by challenging the government's actions and calling attention to the absence of any scientific basis for them. Mr. Palmer and those who believe as he does deserve better treatment.
It was disturbing to read that scientists who are skeptical that the evidence warrants the destructive actions proposed by the Clinton administration are labeled as "renegades." However, those who wring their hands about global warming are in and those who dare to doubt are out.
Wallace E. Stickney
Stickney Technical Resources
North Salem, N.H.***
Your article describes as "renegade scientists" those who dispute the global warming predictions of the Clinton administration. In fact, a recent a petition urging the government to reject the Kyoto global warming agreement was signed by 15,000 scientists and engineers, including 6,000 Ph.D.s in the hard sciences. More than 2,000 of the signers are physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists or environmental scientists with an expertise in climate change. Full details on the petition can be found at www.oism.org/pproject/
There are a lot of "renegades" out there.
Jeffrey Salmon
Executive Director
George C. Marshall Institute
Washington***
Surveys of climatologists and astrophysicists have consistently shown that, by a very large majority, they do not believe that any change in the global temperatures are the result of anthropomorphic activities. Scientists such as Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, Fred Singer, former head of the U.S. Weather Service, and Sallie Baliunas, world-famous astrophysicist of Harvard and the Smithsonian Institute, have consistently denied the relationship between human activities and global temperatures. Dr. Baliunas's work in particular has demonstrated beyond doubt that there is an almost perfect correlation between changes in radiation from the sun and changes in global temperatures. It is, however, a tribute to the arrogance of those people who believe humans can influence temperatures on a global basis when almost 80% of the planet is uninhabited.
R.S. Bennett
Executive Director
Society for Environmental Truth
Tucson, Ariz.
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