Editor:
Kirby Crosby’s recent letter claims climate change is a fraud and attempts to provide evidence by citing questionable “facts”.

“Global warming” fanatics have changed the nomenclature to “climate change.” First, both of the terms have been used in scientific literature and appeared in books for during the past 40 years. The only individual to advocate name change was Frank Luntz, a Republican political strategist, who used focus groups to determine that “climate change” was less frightening to the public than “global warming.” 

“In 2013 arctic ice grew by 50 percent over 2012 levels.” In 2012, arctic sea ice was down to barely half what is normal. That said it was almost certain that 2013 might be a better year for sea ice. Why? Because of a statistical principle called “regression toward the mean”. The consequence is that even though 2013 arctic ice grew by 50 percent compared to 2012 the total ice cover still remains below the mean average continuing a downward a trend of less ice cover for the last 30 years.

“Time magazine alleged the polar vortex was responsible for global cooling in 1974 and for global warming in 2014.” In 1975, NASA launched the first Geostationary Satellite thereby giving weather forecasters, for the first time, a powerful instrument to monitor the planet. Compare that to the sophisticated satellites and computers we have now, in 40 years we have come a long way and should be giving more credence to predictions and forecasts made in 2014.

“If climate change was fact, what would anyone gain by opposing it?” “Deniers” disagree with the science because they don’t want to accept its implications. They have taken a hard look at what it would entail to lower global emissions as drastically and rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded this can’t be done unless you radically reorder our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their “free market” belief system.
“Obama’s science czar promotes the creation of a ‘planetary regime.’” This charge, based on info from a disreputable website called “Zombietime”, that Holdren endorsed the concept of a “planetary regime” is shocking. Still, in fairness, it doesn’t seem much different from Pope Benedict XVI’s endorsement of a “World Political Authority.” Holdren is under assault for statements he made in a 1977 book he co-authored. The problem is that key excerpts have been taken out of context accrediting views to Holdren that he had attributed to others. Remember, Holdren was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate to the position of Science Adviser.

As for John Casey, Tom Nelson, prominent “denier”, has warned that Casey is “a scam artist” trying to trick the “skeptic community” into bankrolling him. Casey has no background in climate science and never published a single peer-reviewed paper on the subject. His SSR Corp. consisted of only seven researchers and since 2008 all full time staff members were released and placed on indefinite on-call status. His self published book, “Cold Sun”, was put together with the help of an astrologer advocate and predicted global cooling would be felt by 2012.

John Kocovsky, Hazelhurst