Will wrong on warming

A decade ago, George Will's opinions were incisive, logically consistent and worthy of respect. Even if you disagreed with him politically, you ignored his opinions at your peril. Sadly, Will's commentaries of the past few years reveal a loss of the intellectual rigor. No better example exists than his piece published in the Deseret News on Nov. 8. in which he repeats the long-discredited myth that in the 1970s climate scientists were concerned not with global warming, but with global cooling — therefore climate scientists can't be trusted.

The myth itself is easily refuted. In September 2008, the American Meteorological Society published an analysis of the climate change research published in peer-reviewed professional science journals between 1965 and 1979. Forty-four research articles found evidence of global warming, while seven reported data supporting global cooling. The AMS's conclusion was, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then."

Since 1979, the volume of research published in professional science journals on the subject of climate change has been overwhelming and consistent in establishing that global warming is happening rapidly and is human-caused.

Seth Jarvis

Salt Lake City