Why do you continue to repeat the same junk science?

Dear Mr. Dworkin and Mr. Peck,

Your story in the "How we live" section of today's Oregonian "With Climate Change comes...":

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/05/post_14.html

is damnable for the things it says and for the things it does not say.

As your senior editors full well know, statements like:

"And our environment is changing, with notable increases in global sea levels, average temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

are completely false as to sea level and global temperature. By all accounts, global sea level stopped rising as of 2006 and there has been no statistically significant warming for more than a decade. I have attached the very latest plot of the global temperature for the entire satellite era, courtesy of NASA and the University of Alabama at Huntsville.

If you do not like that plot, please refer to the interview with Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia carried by the BBC. He told them that there has been no statisitically significant warming since 1995. That's a far cry from what he said prior to Climategate. He realized as you should that it is hazardous to professional reputations to continue promoting hysteria with blatantly false statements. It is also grimly irresponsible.

Another statement:

"The increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, much of it from auto exhaust and other human activities, is one big contributor to climate change. Plants use CO2 to grow as people use oxygen."

is completely misinformed. We now know that man-made carbon dioxide is NOT a significant driver of climate changes. Our climate is constantly changing for a host of natural reasons unrelated to carbon dioxide. Although we pump a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, our contributions are minor compared with amounts naturally in play. Of the now 390 ppmv of CO2 in the atmosphere, no more than about 20 ppmv is related to man. That is so exceedingly small as to be negligible.

Plants need carbon dioxide for food to grow just as we need plants for food to grow. But we do not use oxygen to grow. We burn oxygen and carbon for energy, producing CO2. Plants get their energy from the Sun.

The other thing that I find especially damnable about your article is what it avoids completely: the worst environmental tragedy in a long while: the runaway BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. That is a real environmental tragedy with all sorts of human implications not a fanciful one. A good portion of the blame for this destruction can be attributed to the nearly complete abandonment of traditional environmental issues by those promoting Global Warming. BP is the most prominent part of 'Big Oil' that was trying to morph into 'Big Green' by buying off politicians and promoting 'Green Energy,' all at the expense of necessary environmental safety precautions. Even a cursory look at their safety record reveals that the Gulf disaster was not an isolated occurrence. BP could have been ready for a blowout but was certainly not. By contrast Exxon-Mobil has an excellent safety record because they took safety seriously after the Exxon-Valdez disaster.

Green-pandering is clearly a scientific and environmental disaster.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD
Corbett, Oregon USA

Dear Mr. Bhatia,

This letter is a retransmission of the e-mail to which I received NO response from the Oregonian.

The statement in The Oregonian that I found especially objectionable was about notable increases in global temperatures because virtually everyone who is paying any attention to this subject knows that is false. That was one of the issues featured in the Climategate scandal where those involved were lamenting their lack of ability to account for the flatness or slight decline in the average global temperature since 1998. That is something that you can easily see from the honest satellite data I sent to you. It simply does not take a PhD to understand that the global temperature is not behaving as promoters of Global Warming have maintained. Their predictions have always shown a steady and steep rise that is NOT observed.

Sea level and carbon dioxide are also NOT being correctly and honestly presented by your newspaper, but the explanation requires a little more concentration.

We measure sea level today, not by some paint mark on a rock along the Oregon Coast but by satellite altimeters. The typically quoted rate of rise is 2 or 3 millimeters/year up to 2006 and nothing beyond. But you have to appreciate how difficult it is to make such an accurate determination with waves rising tens of feet on the open ocean and the earth bulging by miles at the equator. Measurements along the Oregon Coast or any other single land reference can indicate that the land is rising or falling not the ocean. The bottom line here from experts like Professor Neils-Axel Morner of Stockholm University is that claims of sea level rise are total fraud. He is a UN IPCC expert reviewer who has spent his life studying this topic. He is widely considered the world's foremost expert on sea level changes. I have attached an interview with Professor Morner and can show you his amazing presentation last month at the International Climate Change Conference in Chicago.

As to carbon dioxide, the atmospheric concentration has increased in recent decades and is still increasing, although not as the UN IPCC predicted. They maintain that it was about 280 ppmv for thousands of years until man started burning fossil fuel and forced it up to 390 ppmv today. The graph frequently shown looks like Michael Mann's Hockey Stick graph of temperature with a steep rise in the 20th century. But that is being faked by splicing three much different data sets together in a dishonest way. The best data we have going back almost two centuries shows that CO2 levels have risen and fallen in concert with Sea Surface Temperatures and not man's burning of fossil fuels. In fact isotopic studies prove that man is responsible for no more than about 20 ppmv out of 390 ppmv today. That is completely negligible. I have attached a review article by the noted Polish scientist Zbigniew Jaworowski, MD, PhD, D. Sci. which I will be happy to explain to you if you are interested. The exhaustive work of the German scientist Ernst-Georg Beck and the Norwegian Tom Segalstad are also very important. These are the world's experts on CO2.

Hence, the statements in The Oregonian that I flagged for you need correcting. They are grimly irresponsible.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD
Corbett, Oregon USA