Dear Editor: Reporter, or should I say editorialist, Rachel Oswald has clearly imbibed heavily from Al Gore's Koolaid cup by perpetuating the global warming hoax on the well-meaning public. I dare say there is no conclusive proof, nor is there a vast scientific consensus that global warming, if it is happening at all, is man-made or the cause of the perceived increases in weather related natural disasters.

Many of the sacred cows of the warmer crowd have been proven suspect. The sea levels are not rising, the ice caps are not melting, and we are not just a few years away from some sort of Chicken Little calamity. In fact over the past couple of years, temperatures have declined to the point where the much ballyhooed warming over the past decade has been mitigated and the polar ice is thickening.

A simple Google search reveals many skeptics of global warming. In a letter dated April 14, 2008, to the IPCC by a Nobel winner and others asks the IPCC to admit that there is no observational evidence over the past 22,000 years to show that CO2, man induced or not, is a driver to temperature change.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/04/14/nobel-prize-winning-peacekeeper-asks-un-admit-climate-change-errors

There is evidence to show that rising CO₂ levels are the results of temperature increases due to changes in solar activity, and not the cause of rising temperatures. The infamous Al Gore hockey stick chart showing the warmest temperatures in history in the 21st century is suspect as well. It all depends on the data set you look at.

Natural disasters are not on the increase. There is no long term increase in the number, frequency, or severity of hurricanes in the United States. They do cause more damage to property as more people live on the shore lines in hurricane prone areas than did even a few decades ago. Katrina was devastating, but to say it was caused by global warming is playing fast and loose with the facts.

On the other hand, what if global warming is happening? Is it all bad? The medieval warming period ushered in the age of the Renaissance by allowing people to grow food in abundance, thus allowing for more time to pursue the arts and sciences. During this warming period, the moderate climate allowed people to grow grain in parts of the world like Greenland, which cannot be done today.

Ms. Oswald, just like the other warming alarmists, always come to the real point of their argument. They believe that the only solutions to this perceived problem is massive intervention by the federal government. This intervention usually comes as massive tax increases on gasoline, reckless policies like corn subsidies for Ethanol, or calls for us to use less efficient energy sources. These policies have little or no effect on the environment, make us poorer and lower our standard of living. I for one, am not willing to make this sacrifice based on a hoax.