Frosty reception for letter writers who reject global warming

In his last diatribe in the Inter Lake (Nov. 14), Ed Berry tells Bill Muth that his “informed conclusions” that global warming is a real threat are wrong, and that he should use scientific thinking which would have led to the opposite conclusion, i.e., Berry’s views. 

Scientific or religious views have nothing to do with Berry’s position, which is based on the nonsensical assumption that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have no influence on the climate. If he thinks he has the majority of climatologists on his side, he is painfully wrong. 

As far as I am concerned, I am not inclined to prove that point. I am just an environmental scientist with board certifications in areas of the physical sciences, including the American Board of Preventive Medicine and the American Board of Health Physics. I mention this to avoid accusations by Berry that I am not really a scientist with no training in the physical sciences. 

As for his own qualifications, according to his own website he is “a physicist, meteorologist and businessman.” In other words he is a specialist concerning weather forecasts, a weather man, not a climate scientist, notwithstanding the fact that more recently he calls himself a “climate physicist,” whatever that means.

I would like my observations to stop here, but I must correct a historical misstatement by Berry, namely that Einstein was a member of the Manhattan Project community of scientists — he was not. As a last remark, I detest Berry’s habit of big-name-dropping, especially of those scientists who are Nobel laureates, implying that they somehow agree with his (non-scientific) views. Berry should stay out of trying to show that he is right and everyone opposing him wrong. 

As most Republicans are against the ideas of global warming and other proven subjects such as evolution, he is very much at home in that party — please stay involved with them, because they, as politicians, are amenable to your views, more so than scientists.

Finally, on Dec. 7, Dale Ferguson wrote a piece about the source of carbon dioxide released by forest fires. He argues that the influence of these fires negates the global warming expectation. He is wrong: global warming expectation is based on the ever-increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, from ALL sources. 

His conclusion that his findings somehow prove that there will be no global warming is hard to understand, except by concluding that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. 

Thiessen is a resident of Lakeside.