Letter: Global warming is a matter of science

Tuesday, June 20, 2006 | 2:24 a.m.

In reading Jon Dale Hollabaugh's June 19 comments regarding Roger Ebert's review of the Al Gore film, "An Inconvenient Truth," he lambastes Ebert and laments that global warming is not real.

Mr. Hollabaugh then supports his claims with flimsy psuedo-logic and statistics. He reminds me of the chain-smoker who ignores the health risks of smoking or the alcoholic who points to his Uncle Albert who lived to be 87 and drank every day of his life as proof that alcohol does no harm. People will do and think what they want. Scientists don't have that luxury. They must conform to a certain standard, not opinions.

Never mind the fact that virtually every scientist on the planet says global warming is a fact. This man, armed with his dictionary and calculator, will fight to the bitter end. Some of the things Mr. Hollabaugh says are flat out wrong, such as mankind's ability to measure accurately the Earth's temperature only being 300 years out of the last 4.6 billion.

Has he ever heard of ice-core samples that date back millions of years and provide an accurate indication of climactic change? He also states that man has been around for 50,000 years and couldn't possibly be the cause of global warming. Has he ever heard of the "industrial revolution"? It's when mankind started polluting the atmosphere by the ton.

Never mind the pictures from space that show global warming's effects over time. Mr. Hollabaugh should take his own advice and abstain from talking about that which he knows nothing about and leave the science to the scientists.

Dan M. Heffley, Las Vegas