Cold Columns and a Warmer Earth

Saturday, April 8, 2006

In the same week that Senate Energy Committee leaders held a day-long workshop on how to cap heat-trapping carbon emissions, the op-ed columns by George F. Will ["Let Cooler Heads Prevail," April 2] and Robert D. Novak ["Spinning Global Warming," April 3] are nothing more than attempts to divert public discourse away from the need to slow, stop and then reverse global warming pollution.

There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists that global warming is underway and that humans are largely responsible. A researcher at the University of California at San Diego analyzed 928 peer-reviewed studies on climate change and found that none of these reports contested that consensus.

While a leadership void is apparent at the presidential level, there is movement at the international and local levels to combat global warming.

More than 160 countries signed on to the Kyoto climate treaty, and 221 mayors across America have agreed to meet or beat Kyoto's goals of reducing global warming pollution by 7 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

The editorial real estate used to re-cover old ground in Will's and Novak's columns could have been better spent engaging the real debate -- how to solve global warming before we cause irreversible damage.

-- Brenda Ekwurzel

Washington

The writer is a climate scientist with the Global Environment Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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In response to George F. Will's "Let Cooler Heads Prevail": Heads in the sand are definitely cooler.

Perhaps some of the 62 percent of Americans who say global warming affects them personally live on hurricane coasts or in Alaska. Perhaps the rest of the 62 percent were not sleeping during the past year when the hurricane naming system was breached, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began the process of listing the starving polar bear as an endangered species and Greenland's glacial melt doubled projections.

Sure, the temperature of Earth has risen and fallen before. But there's a conscious, powerful and very hungry species now presiding over this delicious planet, and our every decision in the next few pivotal decades will affect all life. Science and its reporting serve as extensions of our senses, providing us with information we need to fulfill our new stewardship responsibilities.

Earth needs people wise enough to value more than economic growth.

-- Werner John

Shutesbury, Mass.

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George F. Will's cooler head tells him that positive feedback is compliments from his fans.

Climatologists understand positive feedback is the release of climate-changing gases trapped in Arctic and Siberian permafrost as that region's temperature continues to rise, thereby trapping Earth's radiant heat and warming the planet even more.

Mr. Will should stick with baseball. There, his opinions will not have any impact on the well-being of my children and future generations.

-- John McCormick

Alexandria