Professor ‘mistakes political ideology and propaganda’
To the editor:
I applaud you for your discussion of global warming.
The fact of human kind’s exacerbation of global warming is supported by all credible climatologists and climate research centers.
It also is important to note that current climate modeling not only predicts overall warming trends globally, but also predicts erratic and anomalous weather patterns.
Regarding a proposed solution to curb warming due to carbon emissions, OCCC Professor Alan Jones’ assertion that “[c]ap and trade is really tax and trade” is a popular conservative maxim revealing that his political interests are deeply entangled in this issue.
Jones’ claim that while “[t]he few brokers [of carbon credits] become richer, the rest of the world will become poorer” is a slippery slope indeed.
As a “practicing operations research analyst,” Jones should know better than to mistake political ideology and propaganda for scientific inference.
It is truly amazing — and frightening — that such an educated person can fall prey to the lies and deceptions put forward by those such as U. S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and the energy interests he represents.
Proposing an international conspiracy amongst researchers, Jones has obviously abandoned the priniciple of parsimony in lieu of accepting conclusions based on empirical evidence that contradict his political interests.
Jones further asserts that the biosphere has benefitted from carbon levels that were “up to five times the current level,” presumably referring to the Eocene epoch or the late Permian-early Triassic transition.
He fails to mention that global temperatures averaging 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), compared to modern global temperatures of about 15 C (59 F), marked both time spans.
Furthermore, “[a]s a matter of historical evidence,” the World Meteorological Organization reports that “2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850” (see press release number 869).
The United Kingdom Met Office reaffirms these conclusions, stating that 2000 to 2009 has been the warmest decade on record, based on data from about 1,500 global monitoring stations.
The raw data from each station is openly available at www.metoffice.gov.uk.
—John Weis
Physics major
