To kick things off in my rebuttal to Samuel Settle's April 24 letter ("Global warming alarmists creating unecessary fear") refuting climate change, I will contest the scientific conference he references. The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change's (NIPCC) report was compiled at a conference funded largely by conservative foundations and ExxonMobil. The report is designed to look and be confused for the IPCC reports. The IPCC (not the NIPCC) is part of the United Nations and recently won a Nobel Prize for its work. The Web site realclimate.org has detailed rebuttals of the individual arguments in the NIPCC's report.
That said, the key point in contemplating climate change is this: "Unless you want to become a meteorologist, you must trust somebody." After I read State of Fear by Michael Crichton (RIP, a great author), I had serious doubts about the climate science and conclusions which I had trusted for years. I decided that I didn't want to evaluate every study and model which is released, so I chose to trust the IPCC and the UN instead of a science fiction author.
Concerning the media's relation to climate change, Jon Krosnick's comments are very understandable. If there is, say, 95 percent consensus and certainty on an issue, but when reported it seems like 50-50, the scientists might be upset about how they are portrayed to the public.
And finally, please stop making cracks about how animals breathe out CO2, and its natural. We know. It isn't about what we breathe. It's about the 29 billion metric tons of CO2 which we release each year from burning fossil fuels which took millions of years to be created.
The "global warming hysteria" isn't going anywhere and if you want we can continue to debate and obtain more conclusive science as George W. Bush wanted, or we can run with the 30 years of research that we have, take this issue seriously and start changing the wasteful, unsustainable way that we live.
John Stevenson
junior-community, environment and development
president, Penn State Environmental Society
