Editor, The Times:
Dear Mr. Ramblerton, (May I call you Jim?)
Your letters (“Global warming is science fiction,” May 30 issue) are always fun to read, even if they are sometimes not too edifying.
A belief is a firmly held conviction. The idea that something is true may be based on faith or on scientific evidence. Your scorn for those who favour anthropogenic global warming suggests that you "believe" that they made it all up, like when L. Ron Hubbard, a former science fiction writer, concocted Scientology.
I haven't read the books you mentioned, but I'm presuming that you have and that they either lacked footnotes and references to the scientific literature, or you reviewed those articles yourself and found their investigative techniques and statistical analyses wanting in some fashion.
The first reports about the association between carbon dioxide and a more rapid rise in global temperatures were published around 1975 and were given little notice. Since then there has been a worldwide effort to observe factors that may be contributing to the phenomenon. Attribution groups, such as the Lawrence Livermore investigators, seek to delineate which forces are most responsible.
Also, Oxford University's research group listened to you, and has looked at the interplay of manmade emissions, solar irradiance and volcanic aerosols. Their conclusions suggest that the sun plays third fiddle, volcanoes come second, but anthropogenesis is the lead violin.
That is the current consensus among most researchers. What makes them real scientists is the willingness to accept new evidence, even if it means rethinking an issue and believing something that contradicts their previous conclusions. Unfortunately, so far all the good science points to the conclusion that over the last 50 years we are, in large part, doing it to ourselves.
As far as extinction events, there are people who study paleoclimatology, paleoecology, geology (including ice cores) and the fossil record and are constantly trying to improve human understanding of what went before.
Who knows? Maybe the Yellowstone super volcano will blow its top and it'll all seem like small potatoes anyway.
In the immortal words of Led Zeppelin ... Ramble On.
Bob MacKenzie
Clearwater, B.C.