'Denier' asks Lucy to stop moving the football

I always enjoy reading emeritus chemistry professor and climate scientist Eric Grimsrud point out the pitfalls in my science by finding a few facts that continue to support his viewpoint (Daily Inter Lake, Dec. 8).

I won’t repeat my data regarding Arctic ocean ice increasing and global warming stalling. What is most interesting to me are the Grimsrud/Gore attempts to play “Lucy and the football” with anyone who suggests that their THEORY is just a theory, not “settled science.”

When they proclaim disaster with Arctic ice melting, the oceans rising, and Manhattan Island sinking underwater (gosh, I better have my daughter and her family move to high ground immediately), and then that doesn’t happen (the prediction was that the Arctic Ocean would be free of ice this past summer) they just move the football. Therefore, now we are not supposed to talk any longer about an ocean surface devoid of ice with shipping freely moving throughout the Arctic Ocean; instead we’ll talk about volume of ice.

But I have a difficult time following Mr. Grimsrud’s calculations of sea ice volume. He claims the volume has dropped from16,800 cubic meters in 1979 to a quarter of that volume. Bear with me — I’m not a mathematician . . . The thickness of the Arctic Ocean sea ice is 2 meters according to NASA. If you divide 16,800 (the volume of sea ice) by 2 (the thickness of the ice in meters) you get 8,400 square meters or an area roughly 92 by 92 meters . . . a tad bigger than the area of a football field. in an ocean that is over FIVE MILLION SQUARE MILES IN AREA!

In fact, instead of 8,400 square meters, NASA says the current area of ice coverage is 1.12 MILLION SQUARE KILOMETERS (425,600 square miles of ice) or 280 times the area of Glacier National Park. Just a tad bigger than Mr. Grimsrud’s football field. I doubt search and rescue could even find his football field piece of ice at its largest in 1979 in a 5 million square mile Arctic Ocean! Maybe Mr. Grimsrud’s math is as bad as his science!

 When we deniers point out that global temperatures from historical land-based measuring sites are inaccurate as cities and their self-created warmth expand to envelope these measuring stations, we are dismissed. But when these same land based measurements fail to produce their desired warming, they switch to space based measurements to be more inclusive and fulfill their prophecies (predictions is much too scientific a term for their climate models).

In this way, using a totally different data set they can keep their warming line moving ever upward so it will correlate with carbon dioxide measurements. Unfortunately, some of the scientists whom Dr. Grimsrud dismisses, using Antarctic ice cores, have shown that the rise in carbon dioxide actually occurs AFTER the rise in temperature. Hmmm. Which came first — the chicken or the egg?

 Yes, Dr. Grimsrud, you and your ilk can shout, “you lie” every time I write a letter pointing out a few inconvenient truths that don’t fit your and Occidental Petroleum Al’s computer models and theories. However, unlike you I don’t totally dismiss your theory, but merely point out that this is far from “settled science.” And if any of the readers want a comparison of credentials, I was the Karl P. Klassen Chair and Professor of Medicine at The Ohio State University from 1985 to 1999, probably as relevant as a professor of chemistry which always seems to attach to your writings.

So, please, quit moving the football, Lucy. Even a dumb Charlie Brown, such as myself, will eventually learn to stop trying to kick it.

Myerowitz, of Columbia Falls, is a retired heart surgeon.