Thursday, March 6, 2008

Regarding the March 4 news story "Global Warming Skeptics Insist Humans Not at Fault":

The "skeptics" gathered at a conference in New York are anti-government libertarians who couldn't care less about climate change; they just don't want the government telling them what to do.

They attack other scientists for having uncertainty in data when, in truth, science is not about achieving certainty but about elucidating the next question. Certainty about climate change can be reached only after it has occurred.

If we continue to debate climate change instead of taking action, I will take no comfort in telling the skeptics "I was right" while standing on some tiny island created by the rising seas.

PHILIP L. HOFFMAN

Mount Rainier

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I was appalled at the biased reporting in "Global Warming Skeptics Insist Humans Not at Fault."

Instead of investigating the claims made by the professors and scientists cited in the article, reporter Juliet Eilperin found it easier to slam them as crackpots and morons.

When explaining how the skeptics' group, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), was formed to offer an opposing viewpoint to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), she made sure to note:

"While the IPCC enlisted several hundred scientists from more than 100 countries to work over five years to produce its series of reports, the NIPCC document is the work of 23 authors from 15 nations, some of them not scientists," a blatant attempt to knock the group. But a little basic research would have revealed that the makeup of the IPCC itself is questionable.

MICHAEL BONGIOVI

Warrenton