LETTERS: Ranks of global climate change doubters growing

Corvallis Gazette-Times LETTERS, February 13, 2008
Jean Nelson, Corvallis

Headlines say Emperor penguins MAY be endangered. Global warming MAY destroy our forests. And nonscientist Al Gore made another appearance before Congress, saying that an ice storm doesn’t mean the end of global warming. After 650 dissenting scientists around the world recently challenged man-made global warming, proponents are turning up the heat.

Proponents realize that “Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.” (Samuel Adams, 1722-1803, American politician and patriot of the American Revolution.) Debate and criticism of global warming should not be an emotional issue.

Russian scientists have “rejected the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming.”

Andrei Kapitsa says, “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round Kyoto theorists put the cart before the horse. A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the U.N declared global warming to be a scientific fact.”

Well-known Hungarian physicist and environmental researcher Miklos Zagoni, once an outspoken supporter of the Kyoto protocol who changed from supporter to critic of global warming, explains how nature regulates the amount of carbon dioxide, keeping it in balance.

Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, prominent Japanese scientist and educator, said, “CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another. Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so. Global warming as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.”

Jean Nelson, Corvallis