They write
“It is not our role as scientists to determine how to deal with problems like climate change. That is a policy matter and rightly must be left to our elected leaders in discussion with all Americans. But, as scientists, we have an obligation to evaluate, report, and explain the science behind climate change.”
but then later state
“We and our colleagues are prepared to assist you as you work to develop a rational and practical national policy to address this important issue.”
It’s actually hard to find a more self-contradictory statement!
The next excerpt is
“But no one who argues against the science of climate change has ever provided an alternative scientific theory that adequately satisfies the observable evidence or conforms to our understanding of physics, chemistry, and climate dynamics.”
The authors of the letter do not even define what is “the science of climate change”. From the context of the letter, however, they clearly mean the dominance of the radiative effect of CO2 and a few other gases as being the primary forcing that alters long-term weather statistics and other aspects of the climate. However, it is straightforward to refute this hypothesis as we did in our paper listed above [Pielke et al, 2009] where we documented that the hypothesis
Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades.
has been rejected.
