Here is a letter I sent to Newsweek about their recent "Global Warming" issue:

Congratulations on your latest issue. It is an outstanding example of yellow journalism. It is interesting that almost simultaneously with your publication’s release, one of those evil deniers managed to prove that the temperature history that James Hansen, Al Gore and their fellow travelers have cited to show that the world is getting hotter is in error. It seems that 1998 is no longer “the hottest year on record.” Now the record shows that five of the ten hottest years on record happened before World War II. (Your 1988 issue proclaiming that we need to get ready for hotter summers does not now appear prophetic.) Steven McIntyre, the guy who did this evil deed, is one of the group that proved the Mann Hockeystick showing that the temperature of the world was increasing to unprecedented level was just plain bogus. (The IPCC and government officials make it difficult to prove them wrong by refusing to share their data or methods, but those evil deniers are devilishly clever.)

It appears that you do not have a good grasp of the subject of global warming. Surely you are aware that climate change is always happening. And surely you know that much of the so-called evidence of global warming is bogus. For example it is known that the Chinese temperature data used to show that the heat island effect is minor is inconsistent (The sites were moved out of town as urbanization occurred, so the data are not a consistent set.) Of course for Liberals like yourself and CBS, “fake, but accurate” is good enough. It is sometimes necessary to distort facts to get the truth out. And you and Al Gore know the truth, so you don’t need any facts. You might be interested in knowing that water vapor, not CO2, is the dominant “greenhouse gas.” If CO2 were as important as James Hansen declares, then the CO2 level has risen enough over the last 30 years to make the resulting temperature increase obvious to anyone with a thermometer. But, that clearly has not happened. If there has been any temperature increase it has been no more than what occurs naturally. You are no doubt aware that the Global Circulation Models used to study air temperature near the surface do not handle clouds well. (Everyone can observe that clouds make a difference in temperature.) So the modelers make some assumptions. One assumption they make is that the amount of water vapor in the air increases due to the slight change in temperature driven by CO2. It is sad to report that no one can find evidence that the amount of water vapor remaining in the air has increased. So that assumption doesn’t look very good. They also assume that a lot more cirrus clouds develop cirrus clouds don’t reflect much sunlight, but absorb a lot infrared radiation. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be happening either. Then there is the fact that the global warming hypothesis says that the temperature increase caused by increased CO2 levels should occur primarily at higher latitudes. But recent investigations show that Greenland is colder now that it was in 50 years ago. (I know, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer recently went to Greenland and saw “proof that global warming is happening.” How those two eminent scientists could determine that is a mystery to me, since Greenland is 3 or 4 degrees F colder than 50 years ago on the coast, and even colder that that in the interior. Then there is the South Pole: temperature there is falling every year. So, that doesn’t look very good for the hypothesis either. Now there is a theory that the brown smog covering China and India is causing warming. Do the GCM’s include that? I doubt it. There is another matter that bothers me, and should have bothered you, but obviously didn’t: The IPCC and the supporters of the catastrophic global warming hypothesis are not forthcoming with their data and methods. That is not the way science is done. Consensus is a political thing, and has nothing to do with science. The global warmers are acting more like snake oil salesmen than scientists.

One factually incorrect aspect of your story is that the global warming deniers are lavishly funded. According to Senator Inhofe governments and others have spent $50 billion supporting the global warming supporters, while the deniers have been funded at $19 million. That sounds like David versus Goliath. That business about offering $10,000 to write a paper was not impressive to me. I’ve written about two dozen, and they cost a lot more than $10,000 each. My com[pany had to pay more than that to get one published in an ASME journal.

I suggest that the next time you write about global warming that you get inputs from some of the evil deniers. Try some of these guys:

Richard Lindzen
Fred Singer
Roy Spencer
David Evans
Tad Murty
Roger Pielke
Freeman Dyson
Reid Bryson
Timothy Ball
David Bellamy
Hans Labohm
Chris Freitas
Tom Harris
Bruno Wiskel
Nir Shaviv
Ian Clark
Bruce Merrifield
Tom Segalstad

I don’t know whether there is any global warming or not, and I don’t think Al Gore or the IPCC do either. But, I am confident that catastrophic global warming is not happening. However, if you keep helping beat down the evil deniers, then maybe the UN will be able to take over our economy and Al Gore will make a billion selling carbon credits before it becomes obvious to everyone that the sky is not falling. Or, if we let them destroy our economy quickly enough, Al will be able to claim that he prevented the catastrophe.