Why alarmists can't quit

WSJ December. 2015
Letters:

'Warming' Science Is Anything But Settled

Because the vested financial and political interests are too great for alarmists to drop

In re­gard to your Dec. 2 ed­i­to­r­ial “We’ll Al­ways Have the Il­lu­sions of Paris”:

Con­cern­ing il­lu­sions, we will al­ways have the il­lu­sions of global warm­ing, too, be­cause the vested fi­nan­cial and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests are too great for the alarmists to drop. Their il­lu­sions are great: Sea level rise is go­ing to be cat­astrophic de­spite the top sea level ex­pert, Stock­holm ge­ol­o­gist Nils-Axel Mo­erner, say­ing that is “the great­est lie ever told”; Arc­tic ice is melt­ing de­spite its 5% in­crease in the last nine years; the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarc­tica is fail­ing de­spite the in-creased ice pack there over the past 15 years; ex­treme weather events will in­crease be­cause of global warm­ing de­spite cy­clonic ac­tiv­ity fall­ing to a 30-year low af­ter Rita and Ka­t­rina in 2005, de­spite tor­nado ac­tiv­ity trend-ing down for 50 years, and de­spite the U.N. IPCC con­cur­rence that ex-treme events are not in­creas­ing; global warm­ing is caused by in­creased car­bon diox­ide at­mos­pheric con­cen-tra­tions de­spite the U.N.’s model sig-na­ture for this to oc­cur, a hot spot 10-12 kilo­me­ters above the trop­ics, has never been found, de­spite those con­cen­tra­tions be­ing much higher though ge­o­logic his­tory, at times dur-ing glacial pe­ri­ods, and de­spite the in­crease in car­bon diox­ide con­cen­tra-tions over the past 17 years not caus-ing Earth tem­per­a­tures to rise; tem-per­a­tures are ris­ing quickly de­spite satel­lite data show­ing no tem­per­a­ture in­crease since 1998.

These are the lies alarmists say really need to be mitigated immediately or there will be catastrophe.  The immediacy is needed, of course, before the misinformed populace learns the truth.  Perhaps alarmists should abide by their own precautionary principle and not wreck our economy before the science is settled, which it definitely is not.

Terry W. Donze

Geophysicist 

Wheat Ridge, Colo.