Open Letter to Goodman

I sent the letter below to Ellen Goodman at the Boston Globe, in response to her horrible editorial.

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I read your editorial on the recent UN report on global warming. I have to admit, I am very surprised and disappointed. Most people tend to reserve a special place in hell for Holocaust deniers. These are people who would deny the millions that died at the hands of Hitler their rightful place in history: a warning against fascism and anti-Semitism. You, on the other hand, choose to off-handedly refer to the Holocaust in order to make some trivial point about something you know nothing about.

Tell me, other than what Al Gore and the United Nations tell you about global climate change, do you know anything else? Have you ever taken a course in thermodynamics, meteorology or advanced computational methods? Have you read any legitimate texts on fluid dynamics, differential equations and complex models? You see, these are the topics you would have to know in order to understand the physics of climate change. Fortunately (for me), I have taken these courses and received a graduate degree in Atmospheric Physics, so I know what the variables are, what the assumptions are and what the weaknesses are. You clearly do not.

You point to the United Nations and claim that "scientists" are 90% certain that global warming is due to mankind. Did they poll every scientist? What type of scientists were asked? Just climatologists, or did they asks biologists and phlebotomists as well? What question did they ask? The truth is, the "scientists" to which you refer are government employees whose mandate is to prove that global warming exists. I can tell you that when you have a funded mandate to prove something, you rarely disprove it. Can you imagine a UN scientist expressing doubt that the large, wealthy, income (sorry, I meant carbon) producing countries are not at fault for anything that can be fixed by increasing the UN's budget? This is why science is meant to be conducted outside the public view, without interference from a group of people who can't even agree that what is happening in Darfur is genocide. If you want to find the new Holocaust deniers, your first stop should be UN Plaza.

You attack the American Enterprise Institute for offering money to scientists willing to refute the UN report. You imply that there is something wrong with paying a scientist for his or her time and opinion. Does Al Gore stump for free? Do UN scientists collect unemployment? I guarantee you that, if these global warming alarmists suddenly found themselves to be global warming skeptics, they would quickly find themselves to also be unemployed. If you don't believe me, ask George Taylor in Oregon, David Legates in Delaware or Patrick Michaels in Virginia. Each of those men have been threatened by the government for their opinions. Don't expect the media to come to their rescue though, censorship isn't as easy to vilify when you agree with the censor.

Nonetheless, there is a large and increasingly vocal group of people that are questioning the dire predictions of these politically motivated "reports." These people have two things in common, (i) they are well-trained climatologists, not politicians and (ii) they are constantly smeared by the likes of you. I will admit, bringing up the specter of the Holocaust puts you in a special place as a particularly libelous wretch.

Because I realize you may be having difficulty understanding where I'm coming from, I will use your tactic to explain. "Let's just say that global warming [alarmists] are now on a par with [Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro and all of their socialist heroes that quash dissent in the name of their misguided ideologies]." You know nothing about the science involved or the legitimate questions raised. Have you heard of bovine methane? Probably not. Do you know how much CO2 is produced by the world's population of termites or rice patties? I didn't think so. Do you know that just 30 years ago, "scientists" had agreed we were headed for an ice age and raised the same alarm bells you are raising now? Do you know that the ice shelves have been melting for 10,000 years--as they have following every ice age? These are all inconvenient truths for alarmists like you.

As for your new light bulb and your Prius, congratulations, you've been duped. Your liberal guilt has leveraged itself into uninformed consumerism, an irony, I'm sure, that passes by you unnoticed. If you have the courage of your convictions, I suggest you take all of your parkas, gloves, scarves and hats and give them to charity. If you're right, you won't need them out there. Of course, you'll have to pretend that the entire East Coast is not in the middle of the coldest February in 30 years.