Research supports human causality in climate change

An Aug. 20 Letter to the Editor from a Science Educator at odds with Cherie Miner’s “Why Deny Science” column started with, “Get with the program, Ms. Miner. Where is your science?

You claim that there is “97 percent consensus” regarding the origin of climate change. Of 528 papers published in a recent five year period, only 7 percent explicitly stated humans were the cause, 38 percent implied it, 6 percent rejected human causality outright and 48 percent were neutral regarding the cause. This is hardly a consensus!

Second, there IS a correlation between rising CO2 levels and warming temperatures, but the rise in CO2 levels happen AFTER the warmer temperatures, sometimes as much as hundreds of years later.

I checked the Internet and found the study of 528 papers was from 2004-Feb. 2007 by Oncologist  Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte.  The doctor felt his cancer patients were too worried about climate change and started the study. I found many web pages on the Internet that slapped down the study in 2007 for being non-science but it lives on in the climate change denier Internet world. 

Just because a paper on climate change does not mention human caused  change should a paper be declared neutral on the matter. Scientists have moved past asking if climate change is real. Sorting  NASA publications and finding a percentage that do not state the earth rotates around the sun does not mean there is no consensus that it does. Cherie Miner has the 97 percent number right.

More from the Internet: Changes in the earth’s orbit and rotation combine to cause a warming and cooling of earth that occurs in a 100,000 year cycle. According to tests on core samples from ice sheets some as old as 800,000 years. The beginning of a warming cycle is followed by a rise in CO2 levels from 100 to as much as 800 years later but then the science educator doesn’t mention the next 99,000 years of data that show CO2 levels amplify the warming trend. 

My favorite comment on warming first then CO2 and CO2 is not causing climates change was “ Watch for my next paper ‘Chickens do not lay eggs because they have been observed hatching from eggs.’” All of this may not even matter now. The CO2 levels are higher now than ever before. Fossil fuel burning has put us in a new age. The question now is how much and how fast.

I have learned the last few days that scientists are very touchy about people adding to or taking away from what they publish and having it twisted to a political point of view. One example was a report about an increase of major North Atlantic storms didn’t account for better data available from airplane and satellite observations of storms that could have been missed in the past. Storms averages of frequency and strength are increasing but should not be overstated.

I agree with the science educator’s closing sentence  “Lay people should not misuse science to affect policies” but it should include professionals and science educators.

Barry Lovig is a Red Oak resident.