Jerry Modisette (Letters, Herald, May 24) didn’t need to tell us he’s not a climatologist. It’s clear from his letter, which asserts that “the data showed no global warming for 15 years.” This assertion is false. I don’t know whether he (and other climate-change deniers) are being deliberately misleading or genuinely misunderstand climate processes.

But this is equivalent to someone watching a football game in which the Bulldogs make two touchdowns and the Wildcats make three field goals, then declaring the Wildcats the winner because they scored three times and the other team only twice, and three is more than two, right? Well, either this person knows nothing about football, or he has a stake in the Wildcats.

The Earth system includes not just the atmosphere but also the oceans, rivers, ice sheets and glaciers, and the soils and vegetation covering land areas. The atmospheric temperature data shows no warming trend over the period in question because, due to natural short-term cycles such as El Niño, the energy that is heating our Earth went into the ocean rather than the atmosphere over this period. Now that these processes have cycled to opposite phase, energy is again going into the atmosphere, and we are again seeing temperature records broken across the globe.

Modisette is right about one thing, though: Congress does not determine scientific truth. Neither do letters to the editor. If you are unsure of the facts on climate change, I urge you to get your information from the source: Read the news releases from the institutions that study climate, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It’s the job of their climatologists to research this issue, and they have no incentive to falsify their results – they get paid either way.

Ilana Stern

Durango