I agree completely with Patrick Mazza in his opinion piece on global warming ("Leadership for the clean-energy battle," Opinion, Dec. 3) when he states that " . . . science, not political expediency, must drive global-warming policies."
Now if only he would follow his own advice. His contentions about global warming are scientifically ludicrous.
Consider his opening statement, that 1998 will probably be the warmest year in the past 1,000. The archeological record shows many examples when the earth was warmer than today and without the benefit of one coal-fired power plant.
For example, the Vikings used to grow wheat in Greenland a mere 800 years ago. Unless they knew something about growing wheat in the snow, it's a pretty safe bet it was warmer then than now.
Real scientists look at all of the available data before coming to their conclusions, not just that which supports their political agenda. Satellite and weather-balloon data have shown no increase in global temperatures for the 20 years prior to the 1998 El Nino (and El Nino has never been associated with global warming).
The truth is that the theory that a rise in carbon dioxide forces global-temperature change is seriously flawed. Even the godfather of climate modeling, James Hansen, the lead climate modeler for the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and the man who originally sounded the alarm about carbon dioxide and global warming in his 1988 address to Congress, is backing off of his position. In a recent statement to the National Academy of Science, he stated, "The forces that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change."
With all of this scientific uncertainty about man's impact (or lack thereof) on global-climate change, it is extraordinarily irresponsible to advocate the public and private sacrifices that Mazza suggests we make to meet the Kyoto goals.Mark Schwartz
Renton
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