Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) complained to the Washington Post in a published letter (Dec. 11) that too much space was given to the views of Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in a Dec. 2 Post article on global warming. Lautenberg's letter is below. My comments are in bold and indented.

Juliet Eilperin's Dec. 2 news story on climate change, "Humans May Double the Risk of Heat Waves," is the latest example of the media's "he said, she said" treatment of what reputable scientists say is one of the greatest threats to the human race.

I don’t know what Frank is referring to here. The media usually takes the side of the global warming alarmists!

Even worse, the article countered the findings of the world's top climate scientists by quoting an oil industry-funded economist.

Myron may not be a scientist, but I can’t think of too many people that know as much as he does about the science, economics and politics of the global warming controversy.

Such reporting is not credible, nor does it illuminate a subject of significant importance.

Uh, Frank, in journalistic circles, giving adequate voice to opposing sides is called “balance.”

The article began by citing a peer-reviewed study published in the revered scientific journal Nature, which reported that the risk has more than doubled for the type of lethal heat wave responsible for 35,000 deaths in Europe last year.

Frank may not know this, but the journal Nature doesn’t really have any credibility on the global warming issue any more. It decided in the 1990s that manmade global warming was real and that it would only print studies that supported its pre-determined position. In any event, the study in question isn’t really “science” -- like most other global warming fearmongering, it’s computer modeling that is constructed to produce pre-determined answers. Garbage-in, garbage-out, as they say.

But the last half of the article is squandered on the views of Myron Ebell, an economist -- not a climate scientist -- whose "studies" at the American Enterprise Institute are funded by Exxon Mobil.

Actually, Myron is at the Competitive Enterprise Institute -- a completely different organization than the American Enterprise Institute. I guess to Frank, all free-market/limited government supporters look alike! I’m not quite sure why Frank is throwing stones at AEI for being supported by ExxonMobil -- Frank has accepted campaign contributions from Exxon and other energy companies in the past -– more than $275,000 between 1989-1996.

The article fails to mention this shameless conflict of interest.

“Shooting the messenger” is typical strategy of the junk science crowd. Rather than address the substance of Myron’s comments, Frank chose to engage in ad hominen attack. And what about the conflict of interest among the authors of the Nature study? After all, the study authors are from the U.K.’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research -- an organization that is funded by the U.K. government, whose official policy is that manmade global warming is real. Hadley is so predisposed towards global warming that it even describes the “science” supposedly underlying the global warming movie The Day After Tomorrow as “real enough.”

The problem with this type of reporting was highlighted at a recent Senate Commerce Committee hearing. Robert Correll, senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society, warned, "The trouble with a debate of this nature is you put 2,600 [scientists] against two or three or four [scientists who disagree]."

Correll’s statement is misleading in two respects. First, Correll has the numbers way wrong. Most importantly, it doesn’t really matter how many scientists are on one side or the other. In science, hypotheses are supported by data, not opinion polls.

Ebell is not in the same league as the qualified climate scientists who report that the climate is changing before our eyes;

Frank, climate has always been changing and always will be changing -- that’s the nature of climate. I’m tempted to say that Frank’s almost old enough to remember when advancing glaciers in the 14th century announced the onset of the deadly “Little Ice Age” in Europe!

only the intensity and the speed of those changes are unknown.

The direction of climate change is also unknown -– and for my money, I’d rather that climate warm up than cool down, which is famine-inducing.

Your newspaper does an injustice to its readers by giving Ebell's caterwauling equal weight with the widely accepted views

“Widely accepted” by who? Frank Lautenberg? Environmental activist groups? The liberal media?]

of reputable and unbiased scientists.

I suppose that depends on what the meaning of “reputable and unbiased” is!

-- Frank R. Lautenberg
Washington
The writer is a Democratic senator from New Jersey.