The following link will take you to the Article if you have access to WSJ.com. Thanks to the Wall Street Journal for a great article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116597688558448529-search.html?KEYWORDS=Global+Warming&COLLECTION=wsj ie/6month
Senators' 'Chill Out' Letter to Exxon Creates a Heated Reaction
December 13, 2006; Page A19
In regard to your Dec. 4 editorial "Global Warming Gag Order":
Sens. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D., W.Va.) are threatening Exxon Mobil with congressional censure if it keeps encouraging the scientific skeptics who doubt that humans caused the earth's recent warming trend.
But more than 70% of the warming observed since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. The senators are apparently unaware of the broad and impressive evidence from hundreds of recent scientific studies that document a better explanation for the modern warming -- a moderate, natural 1,500-year global climate cycle.
The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming had already been created when researchers retrieved the first long ice cores from Greenland and Antarctic in the 1980s. The ice cores revealed 400,000 years of the planet's temperature history -- and a 1,500-year cycle that was too long and moderate to be discerned by Celtic tribes or Viking seamen. Physical evidence of the 1,500-year climate cycle has also been found by more than 100 recent peer-reviewed studies by leading research institutes -- in the bottom sediments of six oceans and hundreds of lakes, in ancient relict tree rings from around the northern hemisphere, and in the cave stalagmites and glacier movements of every continent plus New Zealand. The North American Pollen Data Base shows nine complete reorganizations of our trees and plants in the past 14,000 years, or one every 1,650 years.
Science outranks senators. Galileo was a consensus of one.
Dennis T. Avery
S. Fred Singer
Arlington, Va.
(Messrs. Avery and Singer co-authored "Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 Years," Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.)
Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe defied every tenet of democracy when they suggested in an open letter to Exxon Mobil that it should refrain from exercising its right of free speech in supporting scientists who dare to question how much the increase in atmospheric CO2 may warm the world. The disastrous duo should withdraw their letter and apologize to Exxon Mobil. The senators say climate change is "a matter of urgency for all mankind." It is not. The U.N. is about to cut its high-end estimate of sea-level rise ino 2100 from three feet to just 17 inches. The panic is over. The senators are jumping on the climate-change bandwagon just as the wheels are falling off.
The U.K. foreign secretary recently said climate skeptics were like supporters of Islamic terror and should be denied access to the media. After a decade of socialism, freedom of speech does not figure in the U.K. constitution. But let me cite the First Amendment to yours:
"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
I call upon the two senators to live by those noble words.
Christopher Monckton
London
(Lord Monckton was science and technical adviser to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.)
Your attack on Sens. Snowe and Rockefeller for their letter calling on ExxonMobil to stop supporting groups that obfuscate climate change science is misconceived on some essential points. It is not "bullying," "over-the-top" or "intimidating" to call attention to how this enormously powerful company has, over the past eight years, spent millions of dollars to fund dozens of organizations in order to carry out a disinformation campaign on the global warming problem. The actions of Exxon Mobil in this regard can reasonably be seen as an insult to the climate science community, which has been making a heroic effort to communicate the nature of the problem in the face of extraordinary impediments thrown up by industry-funded operatives. A White House official who formerly was an oil industry lobbyist edited climate science program reports to play down global warming. After being exposed, he left his position and was promptly hired to work for Exxon Mobil.
The senators are not alone in believing it is time for Exxon Mobil to stop warring against the leading climate scientists. Instead, it should be acknowledging the conclusions of the leading scientific assessments and helping to lead the way in translating this understanding into a societal response strategy. As yet we have not seen this. But perhaps CEO Rex Tillerson, in a recent speech to the Chief Executives Club of Boston, signaled a shift when he said of climate change: "The potential risks to society could prove to be significant. . . . We should take steps now to reduce emissions in effective and meaningful ways." We shall see what, if anything, follows from this. But did Mr. Tillerson say that because he feels intimidated and bullied by Olympia Snowe? I hardly think so.
Rick Piltz
Director
Climate Science Watch
Washington
Regarding your lead editorial about the letter to Exxon Mobil regarding global warming's "obvious" consequences, I suggest citing the article by Kenneth Green on page 94 in the November/December 2006 issue of The American magazine. It addresses our current knowledge about the 12 significant phenonmena identified by the U.N. Climate Panel in 2000. Of the 12 we have significant knowledge on only one. We have little or no scientific knowledge on the other 11. But on that basis we are expected to subscribe to half-baked global warming "solutions" such as the Kyoto Protocol, which promises a fraction of a degree atmospheric temperature reduction half a century in the future at the cost of perhaps a 30% reduction in current national GNP.
While we should continue to define the problem, if it exists, solutions are still sometime in the future, if they are ever needed.
Bill Allen Sr.
Placentia, Calif.
Yes, there is a chance that some aspect of our understanding of global warming is wrong. There is even a slight chance it is all wrong. But the preponderance of environmental data, theory, intuition, and direct sensory evidence suggest that it is as most of us think it is. The scientific marketplace of ideas has so ruled.
The consequences of not responding to the "prevailing wisdom" (there is anthropogenic global warming) are much worse than those of overresponding to the "null hypothesis" (there is no anthropogenic global warming).
Given the above reasoning, on balance I'm much more distressed by the allegation against Exxon Mobil that it funds numerous pseudo-scientific climate change denial front groups than by the allegation against Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe that they threatened Exxon Mobil to stop doing so "or else."
Robert Bookstein, M.D.
San Diego
By demanding that Exxon Mobil cease funding and denounce organizations that do not adhere to the senators' views on global warming because they are "deniers" engaged in an "obfuscation agenda" that undermines America's "moral clarity," Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe have taken a virtual theocratic position.
No effort is made to address the validity of the science. Instead, it is assumed that global warming theory, as envisioned by two representatives of government, is not merely viable, but is established science. Such an overt assault upon the very foundations of free scientific inquiry is chilling in its implications.
William E. Fleischmann
Seven Valleys, Pa.
Here is the Article on the Global Warming Gag order:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116518745569439462-search.html?KEYWORDS=Global+Warming&COLLECTION=wsj ie/6month