Still a controversy
I am glad that Paul Deacon agrees with me that electric cars do not necessarily decrease carbon dioxide emissions (Letter, Oct. 3, page 8). In fact, they increase the emissions if electricity is generated from coal.
The belief in global warming should be respected even though Google has cited 1,370,000 references for “global warming controversy 2010” and 545,000 references for “carbon dioxide global warming myth.” Many of these controversies are scientific, while some political in nature, and exist in many countries.
There are also 101,000 references for “hockey stick graph controversy.” A sharp temperature rise is shown for the last century in a graph of the estimated temperatures over a period of 1,000 years — like a hockey stick. A reference mentions “The Hockey Stick graph — the foundation of global warming theory — has shown to be scientifically invalid, perhaps even a fraud.”
Fox News recently reported that a sharp temperature peak before the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide was shaved off from the hockey stick.
Last winter, many parts of the US experienced record high snowfall and the lowest temperatures in 100 years and this was claimed as part of the global warming phenomena.
Some criticized such a claim as “Heads, I win; tails, you lose.” Global warming is now used interchangeably with climate change.
Achim Steiner, head of the Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme, said that extreme weather this year, such as floods in Pakistan or Russia’s heat wave, was a “stark warning” of the need to act to slow global warming.
I hope he has not “confused local weather events with the global climate,” as Deacon has indicated.
Charles Hong
Columbus, Ohio
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