Guest Essay By Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired U.S. Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry. Hertzberg is featured on page 174 of the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of More Than 700 Dissenting Scientists on Global Warming.
Dr. Hertzberg's August 19, 2009 Letter To The New York Times is Reprinted Below:
Distortions and misrepresentations of your coverage of global warming/climate change
I am a scientist who has studied the theory of human caused global warming for over 20 years, and it is both saddening and offensive to me as a scientist to see the Times continuously regurgitating the fear-mongering, anecdotal clap trap it is being fed by know-nothing environmentalists and global warming propagandists in the Gore-IPCC-Hansen camp. As an example, consider the latest article in today's Times by Cornelia Dean and her regurgitation from NOAA's Climate Change Center:
"The agency also said that, on average, Arctic sea ice covered 3.4 million square miles in July, 12.7 percent below the 1979-2000 average and the third lowest on record after 2007 and 2006".
That description is a distortion and a complete misrepresentation of the actual data. For your benefit, I have attached the comprehensive, latest data record from Ole Humlum's web site under the heading of "Climate4you June 2009." From the data on page 11 of that site, one obtains the following record for ice coverage for the months of July from 2002 until 2009 (after converting square kilometers to square miles):
July of the year shown below Arctic Ice Coverage - Million square miles:
2002 3.3
2003 3.2
2004 3.5
2005 3.3
2006 3.4
2007 3.3
2008 3.2
2009 3.4
As the above table shows and as the graph from the "Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency" on p11 shows, there is nothing dramatic in the data.
NOAA's statement which a July 2009 ice coverage that is "12.7 percent below the 1979-2007 average." [Note: Dr. Hertzberg has amended his comments regarding "yearly" vs. "monthly" NOAA Arctic ice data.]
The data show a 4 % decline in the yearly average Arctic ice cover from 2002 to 2007, and a 3 % increase in Arctic ice cover from 2007 to today.
If you look at the data shown for average atmospheric temperature shown earlier in the collection of data, it shows a significant decrease during the last decade or so. Data for sea level rise shown for the last 20 years or so, show a rate of rise that is about the same as it has been for the last 13,000 years, from when the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia began to flood as we transitioned from the last "Ice Age" to the current Interglacial Warming.
Your coverage of the issue of Global Warming / Climate change is a reflection of either extreme negligence or simply scientific illiteracy.
It reminds me of the way your reporters such as Judith Miller simply regurgitated the Bush Administration's fear mongering clap trap about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. You helped enable the Bush Administration in its disastrous invasion of Iraq without bothering to independently investigate the facts. You are now enabling the Gore-IPCC-Hansen fear mongers in the same way. The Waxman-Markey legislation for a "cap and trade" program, based on fraudulent science, has the potential to be as damaging to the Nation's economy as the Iraq war was to both our economy and our international reputation.
Is it too much to ask for the Times to diligently research the facts before simply regurgitating the propaganda it is fed?
The most egregious recent example on this issue is the article you published a few days ago on "Climate Change as a National Security". Not only was it based on the false premise that human activity is causing climate change, but you added insult to injury by publishing only those letters to the editor that commented favorably on that absurdity. [Climate Depot Note: See Editorial: 'Climate Depot's Inconvenient Rebuttal to NYT's 'National Security' Climate Argument - August 9, 2009]
Attached is a series of web sites of "global warming skeptic/realists" like myself. The Oregon Petition has been signed by over 30,000 scientists like myself. Also attached is a talk of mine entitled "The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide" and a recent paper that appeared in Energy and Environment.
The latter can be simply summarized by paraphrasing the former President Clinton: "It's the clouds, stupid!".
The so-called "greenhouse effect" was shown to be devoid of physical reality as early as 1909. If you or your science editor, or Friedman, or anyone else on your staff is really interested in the truth, I would be glad to provide you with the appropriate publications and proofs.
You, the House of Representatives, the President's Science Adviser, and his Secretary of Energy have been duped by the "Fraud of the Century"! I can only hope that any proposed legislation on this issue will die its well-deserved death in the Senate. But if it does, it will be for the wrong reason: not because of its phony science but because of its damaging economic impacts.
The only sensible thing you have done recently was to publish the article in the Magazine section about Prof. Freeman Dyson's skepticism on the subject. But his skepticism was based on generalizations and his scientific intuition. There are abundant facts and scientific data that conclusively prove that the theory of human caused global warming is completely false. My attachments contain but the "tip of the iceberg" for those proofs.
I can only hope that my effort in composing this e-mail will not have been a complete waste of my time.
Sincerely,
Dr. Martin Hertzberg
Copper Mountain, CO 80443
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