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• Monday, June 30, 2008 11:01 AM

  @Bjorn_Palmen: Aggressive articles - er, letters - without merit must be stopped

  Bjorn_Palmen: "Scientists are divided on the global warming theory."

  Misleading. The consensus amongst climate scientists, per the U.S. Academy of Sciences and many other national science academies, is:

  There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. This warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate... Increasing greenhouse gases are causing temperatures to rise... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.

  http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf

  Bjorn_Palmen: "It could just as easily be the beginning of a new ice age."

  Lie. That is not correct according to the available scientific evidence.

  Bjorn_Palmen: "Nobody knows for sure."

  Nobody knows "for sure" that terrorists will attack either, but that doesn't mean that we should not address that threat as well - to assert otherwise is lunacy.

  Bjorn_Palmen: "So far THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING AT ALL going on."

  Lie.

  Bjorn_Palmen: "Since the yera 2000 the mean global temperature has FALLEN 0,77 degrees centigrade."

  Lie.

  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

  But even if that were true, the temperature trend since the substantial introduction of fossil fuel-generated CO2 into the atmosphere has been increasing - taking a few years out of that trend to assert the earth is not, on balance, warming during that time is misleading cherry-picking.

  Bjorn_Palmen: "I am a nuclear engineer in Finland and possible climate change is discussed here almost constantly. So far it is only a theory."

  Misleading. If you are a really nuclear engineer then you are not just being misleading but you are moreover being disingenuous when you say that global warming is "only" a theory. Because if you really have a scientific background then you would know that all scientific theories - including, say, atomic theory - can be, and often are, facts as well.

  —Publicola Read Publicola's other letters
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