Suzuki: Is he losing it?
Dear Editor:
Re: Do temper tantrums cause global warming?
Environmental crusader David Suzuki thinks people sceptical of the hypothesis that humans cause global warming have no right to speak out. What a bizarre attitude for a renowned scientist to hold. Dr. Suzuki, of all people, should favour unfettered scientific inquiry that goes where the evidence leads.
When it come to learning about the science behind climate change, I will read and listen to what climatologists have to say on this subject because it is their area of expertise. For me, they have more credibility on this topic than a biologist/geneticist turned environmental crusader such as Dr. Suzuki.
One prominent climatologist, Canadian Dr. Tim Ball recently wrote that influential people in science and politics leaped to the conclusion that humans were behind global warming before there was any research done to support such a belief. Since the notion that humans cause climate change first gained traction in the early 1990s, there has been a huge increase in climate science research. It is now producing results that cast serious doubt on the original idea. For example, a recent experiment concludes the main driver of warming and cooling cycles on Earth is cloud cover, whose amounts are strongly governed by varying radiation from the sun and stars in our galaxy.
If carbon dioxide is supposedly the big driver of global warming, why did the earth cool between roughly 1940 and 1980 when CO2 levels from industrialization were climbing? Clearly, there are other, bigger influences at work than mankind’s small contributions to an atmospheric trace gas.
So why does Dr. Suzuki want to silence climate researchers? Why has he lost faith in the scientific method that formed the basis of his own career and fame? Perhaps he and environmentalists who think like him are afraid that the emerging results of climate research will eventually reach the public and undermine the Kyoto-promoting green crusades that raise money for the Suzuki Foundation and other environmental organizations.
John Dowell
Kanata
