Letter to the Editor

I'd like to thank my friend Dick Byers who wrote the article "The Evidence against Global Warming" published in the April 5th Penn-Franklin News. The article is concise and well written, and I agree with the majority of the scientific points which he has presented. Dick is very well informed, and is well read.

I would only dispute his claim that the vast majority of Americans have been presented with information that skeptics have somehow disclaimed a link between industry/man's emissions of CO2 and global warming. While skeptics abound, their information has been well ignored by the so-called 'main-stream' media, unless one search outlets other than the main players in the dissemination of group-think. If I tune in to the evening news, or read the two main newspapers of record I won't often see these skeptic's claims, unless they are buried on page 33 behind the gossip columns. Only Fox News and internet publications will report with any regularity the skeptics claims. Even in this day and age of the internet, I suspect most people don't seek out this kind of information, as do Dick and myself.

I myself am a skeptic, and I don't work for an oil company or a think tank, or am I in any way a 'victim to propaganda type information,' nor do I 'quote think tank sources instead of real evidence that exists.' I'm simply in search of the truth, and am tired of being lectured by politicians and journalists who have less scientific training than myself.

I want to add one more piece of evidence which seems to have been omitted by the vast majority of the media, even Fox News. This was reported by an Australian website (news.com.au, "Antarctic sea water shows 'no sign' of warming"), and was little published elsewhere.

Scientific studies have shown that on the whole, Antarctica is increasing in ice. It is true that the smaller spur has lost ice, as alarmists have reported, but the much larger main body has increased in ice, and on average, the ice is growing. The alarmist media has failed to report the entire picture. ICECAP's Joe D'Aleo observed in 2008 [PDF, http://icecap.us/images/uploads/MISLEADING_REPORTS_ABOUT_ANTARCTICA.pdf], the relatively small area of the peninsula offers an extremely poor representative sample, as it juts out well north of the mainland into an area of the South Atlantic well known for its "surface and subsurface active volcanic activity." And in the greater scheme, adds D'Aleo, "the vast continent has actually cooled since 1979." 

As Dick has indicated, the vast majority of ice exists in Antarctica, and the glaciers will have little impact on the rise of oceans. If warming exists on the vast majority of the planet, it's only the local temperatures in Antarctica that can readily be used as an indicator to sea level rise. I believe science will study this more in the future. Ice floats, so the northern Arctic ice has no impact on sea levels.

In all, my main complaint is not with science, but rather it is with the media and the politicians, who are trying to use this global warming issue as a scare tactic to sell the news, and as a mechanism to tax carbon, respectively. Won't that hamstring our already suffering economy? I refuse to be alarmed, and I won't easily relent to these new taxes.

One thing is for certain, the climate always has and always will be changing.  As Dick observed: "the climate is constantly changing." ...  "Glaciologist's believe we will be deeply covered by another continental glacier 15,000 years from now."

I for one am going to enjoy the warmth while it lasts.

Doug Bauman