Wednesday, July 02, 2003
The Editor
Ottawa Citizen
Kyoto Science Fact or Fumble?
Dear Sir:
Your editorial (“Politicians should look at the facts, all of them, on global warming”, Ottawa Citizen, Monday, June 23, 2003) seems to be putting words in the mouth of your lead science source, Ramakrishna Nemani of the University of Montana.
It states: "Nemani's contention in Science that carbon dioxide may not be responsible for recent rising temperatures is also old news".
I'd looked at the Science article and that did not ring true. I diligently searched the article for such a statement or implication and could not find it. The second last line actually attributes climate changes to climate model projections of the consequences of increasing greenhouse gases. It seems a direct contradiction to your claim.
I found nothing in the Science article to suggest Professor Nemani believes carbon dioxide is not responsible for rising temperatures. Admittedly the article is a hard read. I hope you just fumbled the facts. Perhaps Professor Nemani can help us out?
In any case your bottom line suggestion that our politicians start to listen to both sides of the climate change debate is long overdue. We can hope Russia will not ratify Kyoto, thus relieving us of Canada’s onerous commitment to it. The alternatives seem to be some kind of failure to achieve it.
Yours truly,
Duane Pendergast
cc by email: Professor Ramakrishna R. Nemani
School of Forestry
University of Montana