30 Fairmont Park Lane S
Lethbridge, AB
T1K 7H7
Phone: (403) 328-1804
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
The Editor
The Lethbridge Herald
P.O. Box 670
Lethbridge, AB, T1J 3Z7
Dear Editor,
Dr. David Suzuki’s excellent column of Sunday, November 26, left me surprised, puzzled - and almost speechless (Fishy news not quite as it seems).
He examined news reports of a scientific report on marine diversity published in Science and compared them with the original article. He found the stories, particularly the headlines, greatly exaggerated the point of the science article. Headlines were much more alarming than warranted. He concluded; “Whether the popular press stories were motivational or paralyzing remains to be seen. But the fact remains right now, the spectacular and the spectacularly awful make headlines. In the news game, the rest is just details.”
I’m left wondering where Dr. Suzuki’s critical examining attitude was during his writing on global warming over the past couple of decades. Many theories with ephemeral connections to greenhouse gases and global warming have been devised and reported in science papers. Newspaper articles quite often report these as fact. Certainly catchy headlines are concocted. Dr. Suzuki has dutifully repeated many of them and some might think he has contributed to the exaggeration himself.
Where does Dr. Suzuki’s new found objectivity come from? Does he know more about biology than of the physical sciences involved in climate change? Does extra knowledge trigger more questions? Does this new perspective signal some introspection and the development of a new more balanced approach to his self assigned task to inform Canadians on science matters? We can hope.
Yours truly,
Duane Pendergast