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| Letters: From Our Readers |
Free-Market Dynamics
11/01/2006
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Heated Disagreements
Dear
Editor:
I attended a weeklong discussion of climate issues, where evidence
given by a multitude of well-credentialed experts support Mr. Gore’s claims, so
I was surprised to read the letter from James Martin in your September issue
(page 22).
I refer Mr. Martin to Sourcewatch.org (part of the
nonprofit Center for Media & Democracy that investigates public relations
spin and propaganda) for an illuminating history and description of the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine, headed by Arthur B. Robinson, “an eccentric
scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on
the fringe of accepted research.”
The petition Mr. Martin cited dates
back to April 1998, and the National Academy of Sciences issued an unusually
blunt formal response to it: “The petition does not reflect the conclusions of
expert reports of the Academy.” Sourcewatch.org also states that when questioned
in 1998, Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon petition had
identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists or
meteorologists, “and only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn
from the core disciplines of climate science—such as meteorology, oceanography
and glaciology—and almost none were climate specialists.”
A recent
study (Oreskes—Science, December 3, 2004) of 928 peer-reviewed papers on global
warming in scientific journals found evidence of human-induced warming in all
928; zero showed otherwise.
Judith Kolata, Chicago Realpoli-Critique
Dear Editor:
In “Err America” (August 2006)
Julia Sweig begins her piece: “Resentment of the U.S. . . . especially among our
allies . . .” This illuminates her false premise.
With a few exceptions, we
do not have, and have not had, allies. What we had are nations that assumed they
might some day need us to defend them against the Soviet Union. Lacking that
threat, they feel they can afford to be as hostile to us as their national and
commercial interests require.
Lord Palmerston, Queen Victoria’s foreign
minister, was correct, if undiplomatic, when he noted that nations do not have
friends, but merely interests.
Len Winner, Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
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