In response to Dr. John Zebelean”s commentary (Record Bee, Dec. 31, 2008), his attack on my motives and intelligence was rude and uncalled for. Where did he learn to shoot the messenger? Was it in Yugoslavia or in the US? My friends at NASA tell me it was frequently the practice there. I will respect his scientific intelligence as shown in your dissertation on the earth”s atmosphere. I was aware that our planet”s atmosphere insulates us from the Sun. (I am not trying to reduce his lecture to a sentence of course.)
And I do agree with his point that “We cannot stop global warming”. I have managed many highly skilled engineers and scientists that were so brilliant and focused on their specialty that they saw only trees, never a forest. While I would not accuse him of that, his insistence that the Sun doesn”t play a major role in our planets temperature leaves me questioning his conclusions. I accept that he stands with Al Gore on this topic, and possibly with his knowledge he even helped Gore invent the Internet.
I stand by my belief that the Sun (and solar activity) is the major influence on our temperature swings, possibly followed by major volcanic activity. Man”s contribution remains insignificant. In fact, the Earth has gone through 75 major temperature swings in the last 4500 years swinging from very warm to ice ages that will wipe out life as we know it. Man was not steering this course. Search the Internet and one will learn that hundreds of respected scientists with verifiable credentials consider human induced global warming to be the scam of our time. My conclusion remains valid, our elected officials should not be spending our money on such a fool”s game.
Ed Calkins
Kelseyville
