LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: CLIMATE WARNING IS BEING BASED ON BAD MODELS

To the editor:

In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Al Gore said he would "reverse the trend of global warming." This sent me to my computer to see what I could discover about this so-called global warming.

The Internet contained thousands of sites, and now I have a problem: What do I read and believe?

One thing I noticed is that many of the articles that warn of global warming appear to be several years old and relate primarily to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. The more recent articles seem to be in disagreement with the scientific community that was loudly proclaiming global warming.

While some 2,500 scientists, most of whom were economists and environmentalists plus a few climatologists, had signed the First Assessment, as it was called, over 15,000 scientists, many of whom were meteorologists and climatologists, signed a petition declaring the Second Assessment of the protocol to be a misleading statement.

The Second Assessment was not a scientific statement on global warming. It was a political statement in which rich nations were to be fined in accordance with the amount of fossil fuel they consume. Poorer developing nations would not be fined but would benefit from the taxes raised from the richer nations.

The petition against the Second Assessment stated, "The treaty is ... based upon flawed ideas." It also stated that recent atmospheric data simply do not support the "elaborate computer-driven climate models."

There is a greater degree of skepticism against the upcoming Third Assessment of the June 2001 U.N. meeting to push the Kyoto Protocol. Many climatologists are asking, How could the world be warming and not warming at the same time?

Dr. Roy Spencer, senior scientist of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center at the Marshall Space Center, says, "Present computer simulations of the world's climate predict the lowest layer of the troposphere of the atmosphere should be warming faster than the earth's surface." However, radiosonde and satellite data show a warming and cooling of the troposphere and a warming of the earth's surface. He does not say global warming is not occurring, nor does he say it is. He is saying the computer climate model is flawed.

There is no dispute among climatologists about the current trend of climate changes. But the warming and cooling the world is experiencing is not of a global nature. It is a regional situation.

I am a retired earth science teacher. In 1955 and 1956 I took an active part in Operation Deepfreeze, the beginning of the opening of the Antarctic continent to scientific study, and the beginning of the International Geophysical Year 1957-58. It was an exciting, dangerous and fulfilling experience. I have worked side by side with many famous scientists and have seen their devotion and sincerity in their work as they sough scientific data. I can understand why true scientists would be upset when they see incomplete and flawed scientific data used as propaganda to forward political goals.

The prophets of doom have been wrong in the past. Global warming as it is being presented to us by the Kyoto Protocol is a scam. Past history has shown that governments have done a terrible job on anything and everything they try to fix. One can just imagine the mess when governments play God and start to fix Mother Nature.

The sky is not falling.

KEN ALDRICH

Cape Girardeau