Letters to the Editor about global warming

The Weather Channel can predict weather only out to a few days, so how are we supposed to believe global warming advocates when they say they "know" that within 25 to 50 years we'll all be living in a sauna atmosphere? There are just too many variables to take into account. The earth is just too big, and we are just too small, for us to make a prediction in the overall effect.

Greg Weinfurtner
Albany, Ohio

I vacationed at the Jersey shore for decades, and in two winters, 1976-77 and 1977-78, I saw saltwater freeze between the jetties. Everyone was saying we were in for a new ice age and "scientific evidence" presented in the media supported it. Now the scientists are certain of a "greenhouse effect," with equal certainty. I do not think that science has shown anything one way or the other.

Ronald C. Ruloff
Burlington Vt.

The cosmic ray theory seems to fit so many diverse facts that it is becoming hard for me to think that other explanations hold water. Even very long timelines, extending to billions of years, seem to correlate the state of the planet with the average cosmic ray density coming both from the galaxy and from outside galaxies. It's hard to explain the correlations as coincidence, which, frankly, would be akin to winning the lottery a few weeks in a row.

Given that the oceans take about 800 years to reach thermal equilibrium, it does strain credulity that ocean temperatures (and hence the rise in level) is the result of activities that only started around 1850 and have become intense only in the last century. One would think that today's ocean temperatures have to be the result of activities that took place around 1200, well before the Industrial Revolution.

Marwan Nusair
Cincinnati

The Monitor's recent article on this subject referred to the possibility that sunspots are the cause and asked the question whether climate-change skeptics are ignoring strong scientific evidence. I cannot escape the conclusion that they are ignoring the evidence.

I attach a link to a paper by the Royal Society (an organization that is based in the United Kingdom, which is not only one of the oldest scientific bodies in the world, but also one of the most authoritative). The study reviews the data and concluded that, while sunspots do have some effect, they do not explain global warming.

Anyone interested in this subject would do well to review this paper: www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedingsa/rspa20071880.pdf

Bruce Sanderson
Manukau, New Zealand

We're like dangerous children with short attention spans, chasing the climate catastrophe of the month. We do so with such narrow focus that scientific credibility suffers along with those who have the most to gain from continuing development. We can test and explore a lot of information, and not understand what it means.

The hills of South Dakota survived the little ice age, the big droughts and fires of the last four centuries, and even the woodsman's ax. They don't seem to have cared if the planet warmed and cooled a few degrees, at a time when humans could not have made a difference.

Franklin Carroll
Custer, S.D.

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