Petition shows scientists reject global warming

Tim Miller's letter to the editor in the Lodi News-Sentinel, April 10, 2007, arguing for human-caused global warming, illustrates, at best, the blind faith and dogmatism of environmentalists and, at worst, downright dishonesty.

Miller writes, "The number of scientists qualified to have an expert opinion is in the thousands. Those who doubt human-caused global warming might fill a walk-in closet."

Either Miller is oblivious to the fact that over 17,000 American scientists have signed a petition promulgated by the Petition Project (http://www.oism.org) rejecting the notion that global warming is human-caused and urging the U.S. government to reject the Kyoto accord, or Miller has simply chosen to ignore it because it is "an inconvenient truth" for his position.

The petition states in part that "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

I imagine that it is also inconvenient for Miller and other global warming alarmists to acknowledge the existence of the Medieval warming period from about 900 A.D. to 1300 A.D., when Vikings grew crops in Greenland, and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1850, both of which occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth's climate.

I imagine it is also inconvenient for them to explain how temperatures began warming at the end of the Little Ice Age about 1850, long before manmade CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate, and then around 1940, just as manmade CO2 emissions rose sharply, temperatures began a decline that lasted until the 1970s, prompting the media and many scientists to fear a coming ice age. In other words, as CO2 emissions rose, temperatures got colder!

In the end, however, if the alarmists have their way, the people who will be inconvenienced the most are from the poverty-stricken Third World. While alarmists may view expanding basic necessities like running water and electricity as a threat to the planet's health that must be avoided, these necessities mean the difference between survival and a life of back-breaking poverty and premature death.

Dennis Cochran
Lodi