Letter: False claims in a recent letter

The May 2 letter to the editor “Global-warming hysteria” in The Aspen Times was filled with misinformation gleaned from the Western Slope Watchdog. All of the false claims in the letter are disproven by volunteer climate scientists on the award-winning Skeptical Science website. They speak plain English so non-experts can understand, and they disprove every climate denier myth out there with evidence that’s published in the world’s top science journals.

The “hysteria” letter cites one scientific authority, John Casey, who is a charlatan, even by professional climate-denier standards, and that’s saying something because they’re all fossil-fuel shills themselves. (DeSmog Blog)

Casey’s impressive-sounding Space and Science Research Center turns out to consist of a website with Casey as the only employee, rather like the Wizard of Oz. He has no education or experience in climate science. Even Casey’s fellow climate skeptics such as Tom Nelson say Casey is a “hoaxer, fraud or scam artist.” The climate skeptic site JunkScience.com’s take on Casey: “We think he’s a scam artist trying to get his hands in your pockets. … He lacks any credibility in climate research.” Climate skeptic Leif Svalgaard’s comments on Casey: “John Casey should not be relied on for valid research. … His credentials are not legitimate.”

The reason climate denial exists is that most people don’t distinguish between real, peer-reviewed science and some guy with a website that has a scientific-sounding name. Every person who earns his living as a climate denier is paid by the fossil-fuel industry. You can find them all on the DeSmog Blog (one of Time’s Ten Best Blogs of 2011) with the documentation of the money they secretly take from fossil-fuel corporations.

But even if you don’t think man-made global warming is real, we could get insurance against it, which would cost us nothing, just in case the worldwide scientific community is right, and doing so would greatly benefit our economy and our health. By phasing out fossil fuels, we’d eliminate the pollution of our land, water and air that they create. We’d reduce the more than 30,000 premature U.S. deaths caused annually by carbon pollution and our skyrocketing childhood asthma rates (Environmental Protection Agency).

Economic studies show that we could create millions of U.S. jobs and increase our gross domestic project by tens of billions annually (REMI) by making the fossil-fuel industry, not taxpayers, pay for the more than $1 trillion in climate-change disasters that their products have caused (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). By putting an escalating carbon pollution tax on all fossil fuels and making that tax payable monthly to every American, we’d give people the money to switch to clean energy. Ordinary Americans would make money in this process (Citizens Climate Lobby).

There would be no government spending or involvement of any kind, just the free market doing its thing, We’d end up with lower energy bills because solar and wind prices keep dropping dramatically every year. And with fossil fuels no longer getting the over $550 billion in government subsidies we’ve been giving them annually (Bloomberg), we’d lower our tax bills.

Lynn Goldfarb

Northglenn