Articles Tagged "James Macdonald"

To Matt Peterson, Huffpostgreen, and Chris Matthews,

Your article on sea level rise contains ridiculous predictions.

Based on the present rate of sea level rise, which even your article pegs at about 2 millimeters per year, the rise for the next century would only be about 8 inches, not three feet! Statements that it is accelerating are pure nonsense. Worldwide, there has been no warming in the last 14 years. Only in the United States have we had a warm year so far after a very cold winter two years ago.

At the same time the Arctic regions have been colder than normal for the past 12 months. The Southern hemisphere has also had no warming. The major icecaps are not melting and the South Pole ice is getting thicker..

This all adds up to no acceleration of sea level rise. No one knows whether our climate will get warmer or colder in the next century. This will be governed by the sun and the ocean oscillations.

James Macdonald, retired meteorologist

February 8, 2011

To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate:

In reply to "The Importance of Science in Addressing Climate Change"

On 28 January 2011, eighteen scientists sent a letter (see also this news story) to members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate urging them to "take a fresh look at climate change." Their intent, apparently, was to disparage the views of scientists who disagree with their contention that continued business-as-usual increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the burning of coal, gas, and oil will lead to a host of cataclysmic climate-related problems.

We, the undersigned, totally disagree with them and would like to take this opportunity to briefly state our side of the story.

The eighteen climate alarmists (as we refer to them, not derogatorily, but simply because they view themselves as "sounding the alarm" about so many things climatic) state that the people of the world "need to prepare for massive flooding from the extreme storms of the sort being experienced with increasing frequency," as well as the "direct health impacts from heat waves" and "climate-sensitive infectious diseases," among a number of other devastating phenomena. And they say that "no research results have produced any evidence that challenges the overall scientific understanding of what is happening to our planet's climate," which is understood to mean their view of what is happening to Earth's climate.

To these statements, however, we take great exception. It is the eighteen climate alarmists who appear to be unaware of "what is happening to our planet's climate," as well as the vast amount of research that has produced that knowledge.