Letter: Ebert ventures too far out of his league

Monday, June 19, 2006 | 7:02 a.m.

Regarding Roger Ebert's June 16 review, "If you still have doubts, go see the Gore movie":

Roger Ebert's education apparently was devoid of the basics of logic and law. Let's look at the "facts" proffered by Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" that Ebert buys lock, stock and barrel.

"Global warming is real." The Earth is about 4.6 billion years old. It has been both molten and frozen entirely in a 10 kilometer layer of ice! Roemer and Fahrenheit began measuring temperature in the early 1700s, i.e. about 300 years ago. Man, therefore, has only been able to measure it fairly accurately for the last 300 / 4,600,000,000ths of Earth's life, i.e., statistically irrelevant!

Similarly, "caused by human activity"? Humans have been on Earth for about 50,000 years, i.e. even if we knew the temperature during those years, 50,000 / 4,600,000,000ths is still statistically irrelevant (forget the alleged "last 10 warmest years").

Mankind must "halt or reverse it." Man hasn't been able to mediate the climate, earthquakes, storms, eruptions, etc.; how does it follow that mankind could affect warming or cooling of Earth? Remember 1940-70, when there was the threat of "global cooling"? Every cold winter in those days was hailed as proof of a coming new Ice Age.

"If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a 'tipping point' " - oh, please. Using Al Gore's glaring generality, "most scientists" believe that the Earth has about half a billion more years of life!

Roger Ebert should stick with stating his "feelings" about films, and not venture in the realm of "facts" ("an actual occurrence" - Webster) and "logic" ("analytic, deductive" - Webster).

Jon Dale Hollabaugh, Las Vegas