Jim Wilson’s May 5 letter is a stew of conspiracy-theory misinformation that only leaves out black helicopters and alien abductions. He’s wrong about DDT being harmless to wildlife. It’s well documented that DDT crashed populations of pelicans, ospreys and peregrine falcons during the 1950s and ’60s.

Wilson says that “between 1857 and 1957 the percentage of atmospheric CO2 was much higher than exists today.” But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which monitors CO2, says there has been a 36 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past 150 years.

Wilson tries to rebut global warming by quoting Dr. Arthur Robinson, who announced that “more than 31,000 scientists had signed a petition rejecting the theory of human-caused global warming.” Robinson is the head of his own tiny Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and has no training in climatology. Although he claims 31,000 signatures, according to his own figures only a miniscule 39 signers are climatologists.

What do climatologists really think about global warming? In 2009 Peter Dornan and Maggie Zimmerman of the University of Chicago published a survey in the journal Earth and Environmental Sciences. They found that 97 percent of climatologists publishing peer-reviewed literature agree that humans are causing global warming. This near unanimity reflects conclusions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that climate change is real and occurring now.

The IPCC predicts that mean global temperatures could rise well above 5 degrees Fahrenheit in this century, enough to have disastrous consequences for farming and wildlife. A 2008 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded that global warming is already here and will continue to affect U.S. “agriculture, land resources, water resources and biodiversity in the United States.” Finally, Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences in a 2005 report to Congress said it most simply, “The Earth is warming

ROB PETERS
Paonia

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