Daily News-Record (Harrisonburg, VA) – November 18, 2016
Once again the editor has taken inaccurate information about climate change from the Wall Street Journal and used it to espouse a Pollyannaish view of the future (“To save a Gas,” Nov. 7). The scientific credibility of the cited article was rated as “very low” by six climate scientists at climatefeedback.org. Consider just two claims from the article and editorial.
One is that Earth will experience only modest warming this century in the face of continued fossil fuel use. A recent article in Nature Climate Change documents the fallacies in such a claim and concludes that future warming will indeed be around 4.5 degrees Celsius under business-as-usual emissions.
Another is increased farm productivity. Several recent scientific articles show that crop yields will decrease, rather than increase, for most warming scenarios.
Rather than hoping for the best, it would be better for the editor to learn about projected climate change impacts and work toward free-market solutions to the problem.
Leslie Grady Jr.
Harrisonburg
Climate Action Alliance of the Valley 