Terry is an aerospace engineer with degrees from the Florida Institute of Technology and the University of Pittsburgh. He worked for Lockheed Martin and Vought Aircraft. Here is his rejoinder to climate-change deniers which elpasonaturally believes to be quite valuable even if the El Paso Times prefers (seemingly) to cater too often to religious zealots. Please read his piece carefully and thoroughly. Don't just scan it. I've tacked on a thought-provoking video at the end of the post. Here's Mr. Terry Sunday:
It's no fun predicting things if there's absolutely no chance of being wrong.
I recently learned that the Los Angeles Times has a new editorial policy that they will NOT print letters from people who deny the reality of human-caused global climate change. Here's the L.A. Times editorial, written by Paul Thornton and published on October 8, 2013:
A piece this weekend debunking the claim that Congress and the president are exempted from Obamacare has drawn a harsh reaction from some readers and conservative bloggers. But their umbrage wasn't with the piece's explanation of why letters making this claim do not get published.
Rather, they were upset by the statement that letters "[saying] there's no sign humans have caused climate change" do not get printed. Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters blogged about it over the weekend:
"It's one thing for a news outlet to advance the as yet unproven theory of anthropogenic global warming; it's quite another to admit that you won't publish views that oppose it. As amazing as it may seem, that's exactly what the Los Angeles Times did Saturday in an article by editorial writer Jon Healey...So letters to the editor 'that say there's no sign humans have caused climate change ... do not get printed.' That's quite a statement coming from an editorial writer not named Al Gore."
Point of order: Jon Healey didn't write that intro, and neither did Al Gore; as The Times' letters editor, I did. It ran without a byline because it was intended to be a straightforward editor's note introducing the piece; my apologies if that caused any confusion. Healey was responsible for everything beneath the boldface subhead, "Editorial writer Jon Healey explains why this claim in the debate over the healthcare law is off-base."
As for letters on climate change, we do get plenty from those who deny global warming. And to say they "deny" it might be an understatement: Many say climate change is a hoax, a scheme by liberals to curtail personal freedom.
Before going into some detail about why these letters don't make it into our pages, I'll concede that, aside from my easily passing the Advanced Placement biology exam in high school, my science credentials are lacking. I'm no expert when it comes to our planet's complex climate processes or any scientific field. Consequently, when deciding which letters should run among hundreds on such weighty matters as climate change, I must rely on the experts-in other words, those scientists with advanced degrees who undertake tedious research and rigorous peer review.
And those scientists have provided ample evidence that human activity is indeed linked to climate change. Just last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-a body made up of the world's top climate scientists-said it was 95% certain that we fossil-fuel-burning humans are driving global warming. The debate right now isn't whether this evidence exists (clearly, it does) but what this evidence means for us.
Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying "there's no sign humans have caused climate change" is not stating an opinion, it's asserting a factual inaccuracy.
"Hmmm," I thought after I read that editorial, "I wonder if the El Paso Times would be brave enough to adopt a similar editorial policy. I'm gonna write a Letter to the Editor about it and see what happens." Here's the letter, which ran in the El Paso Times on February 1, 2014:
As surely as day follows night, right-wing ideologues and fundamentalist religious zealots will cite the recent cold spells that brought bone-chilling temperatures to much of the U.S. as proof that global warming is not real. Many of these deniers, burying their heads firmly in the sand, will continue to trumpet their bizarre fantasy that anthropogenic climate change is a nefarious liberal hoax designed to expand government and curtail personal freedoms. Sadly, many Americans lack the scientific knowledge to recognize these claims for the lies they are, so they accept them at face value: "Gee, it was really cold this winter, so that can only mean all the scientists who say the earth is warming up are wrong."
We would be well advised to heed the warnings of the overwhelming majority of the world's top climate scientists, who are 95% certain that human activities are changing the earth's climate. We would be equally well advised to ignore the rantings of misguided, ignorant or willfully deceptive deniers. The stakes could not be higher. The future of life on our planet depends on whether we can curtail our releases of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Late last year, the L.A. Times courageously decided to stop publishing factually false letters to the editor that deny the reality of human-caused climate change. Perhaps the El Paso Times should follow suit.
Okay, so maybe I laid it on a little thick with the "right-wing ideologues and fundamentalist religious zealots" stuff. Still, though, those particular subsets of American society ARE the ones that most adamantly refuse to accept the fact that human activities affect the earth's climate. "God created humans to have dominion over the earth and all its species," right?
The ignorance, wanton disregard of facts and utter lack of knowledge of how the scientific method works that some members of these groups demonstrate is simply appalling. If they can't accept the truth due to their close-minded ideological or religious biases, then they should forfeit the right to be taken seriously in discussing matters of public interest.
No responsible newspaper editor would print letters asserting that the earth is flat, or that gravity is "just a theory," or that the airliner contrails that often form above El Paso are really a secret plot by the New World Order to poison us. Why, then, should letters to the editor disputing the settled science of anthropogenic climate change not be similarly rejected out of hand?
As I expected, my original letter spawned a flurry of responses from, you guessed it, climate-change deniers. Imagine that! Three letters followed within a week or so after mine. The only one that warrants comment is the one from Donald Morrill, Jr., that ran on February 6. I won't quote the whole thing, but here's the operative paragraph:
NASA's satellite date from 2000 through 2011 paints a different picture as well. NASA's data revealed that the Earth's atmosphere is allowing much more heat to be released into space than the global-warming "consensus" computer models predicted, according to the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing.
Wow, so an article in a "peer-reviewed science journal" refutes global warming, eh? Sounds like a pretty strong argument that the earth's top climate scientists are wrong, eh? But here's "the rest of the story," in the form of another Letter to the Editor that I wrote but have not yet sent in for publication:
As expected, my letter predicting that this winter's cold weather would bring out climate change deniers proved accurate. Several letters followed from deniers who tried unsuccessfully to refute the fact-not opinion-that the evidence of human-caused climate change is so strong that it is no longer debated in the scientific community. Those deniers merely showed their ideological, political or religion-based biases.
For example, letter writer Donald Morrill, Jr., claimed that a paper in "a peer reviewed science journal" disproves global warming. However, Mr. Morrill did NOT mention that the editor of that journal, Wolfgang Wagner, resigned his position solely because he published the very paper Mr. Morrill cites. Dr. Wagner later said the paper was "fundamentally flawed" and "should not have been published." The "peers" who reviewed it had no expertise in climate science, and thus wrongly endorsed a paper containing methodological errors and false claims. Mr. Morrill didn't mention that, either. Nor did he note that one of the authors of that paper has ties to a right-wing, evangelical Christian, anti-climate-change organization.
Dr. Wagner took the honorable course of resigning because of his error. Is it possible that Mr. Morrill will also choose the honorable course and admit that he deliberately made a statement that he knew was misleading in order to justify his rejection of human-caused climate change?
I sincerely doubt it.
In fairness, the El Paso Times published a couple of recent letters that support the reality of anthropogenic climate change. I've seen no indication, however, that the Editorial Board is considering adopting a policy of not printing letters from deniers, which I still think is the proper course of action. I've sent Editor Bob Moore links to the relevant factual information, and he said he would review it, but as far as I know there's been no action as yet.
And that's where it stands as of today. - Terry Sunday
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And here's a provocative editorial video from Dennis Trainor, Jr.'s Acronym TV:
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