The author of the letter to the editor, “When climate models fail, families pay” (Herald, Oct. 5), used an article in Scientific American to discredit climate science and predictions about future conditions. The paper had nothing to do with climate change. The particular paper was in a totally different field of math, not even constrained to our three-dimensional world.
For anyone who questions predictability, I suggest checking global temperatures over the past three-quarters of a century at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies (see: giss.nasa.gov) website.
Plot the data in Excel and evaluate it. This is the period in which atmospheric greenhouse gases increased by more than 50%. If you don’t trust NASA-GISS (using 7,000 monthly measurements over the entire planet – land and ocean), then use the NOAA data or NCAR data. If you don’t trust them either, how about the Japan Meteorological Agency, or the HadCrut data out of the East Anglia England, or the lower atmosphere measurements from the Jet Propulsion Lab at Cal Tech. They all are in rather tight agreement of earth surface warming.
The letter writer also referred to “connected insiders who stand to gain financially” by climate science. On the internet you will find the name Patrick Hegarty associated with “Delhi Trading LLC (Oil and Gas Operator),” listed as “Owner/Operator of Delhi-Trading, LLC” on Utah legal documents, and “Semi Retired at DELHI-Trading, LLC” on Linkedin.com. The author included no mention of any personal insider connections or potential financial gain.
Gerald Baumann
Durango
