'Liar' charge is no help in the debate over global warming

I RECENTLY testified before the US Senate on the issue of global warming. Among the other witnesses was Harvard professor Daniel P. Schrag. Schrag and I disagree on the issue. But as scientists and scholars, presumably we are both dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of truth.

Given our disagreement, it wouldn't have surprised me if Schrag had invited me to Harvard to discuss climate science with him. But it startled me to read in The Boston Globe ("On a swift boat to a warmer world," op-ed, Dec. 17) Schrag's assertion that people who disagree with him about the pressing need to avert a climate catastrophe are "liars and charlatans."

Perhaps Schrag, being a Harvard professor, is infallible. Or perhaps he has some special talent that enables him to peer into the soul and discern human motivation. But I tend to think that Voltaire had the appropriate insight when he said, "Divines are too apt to begin their declarations with saying that God is offended when people differ from them in opinion."

DAVID DEMING
Norman, Okla.
The writer is an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma.

I AM what would be the equivalent of one of your state senators in the Parliament of New South Wales, a state of Australia. I was also a professor in virology and computer modeling until entering politics some years ago.

The opinion piece by Daniel P. Schrag contained the most disgraceful allegations concerning other scientists: "witnesses spout[ing] outrageous claims intended to deceive and distort" and "a gathering of liars and charlatans."

To describe scientists who have contrary views as such is more befitting a barroom brawl and belittles both Schrag and the honored institution whose name he has used.

I too am a "climate skeptic " and as such I believe that the climate has been constantly changing, sometimes quite violently. However I believe that the reasons for these changes are not known with any great certainty.

I am not alone in this belief. In every survey of climatologists carried out the response has been the same: The world's climatologists are evenly split as to whether they believe the predictions of the computer models are reliable . Are more than half the world's climatologists -- those who do not agree with Schrag's view -- also "liars and charlatans" making "outrageous claims"?

JON JENKINS
Sydney

CLIMATE SCIENTIST Daniel P. Schrag would have recharged his optimism if he instead had traveled to Representative Marty Meehan's town meeting in Lowell last Saturday.

While Schrag's recent testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works under the lame duck chairmanship of Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, might have fallen on deaf ears, he would have been pleasantly astounded with the unfettered enthusiasm and electric atmosphere radiating at the congressman's University of Massachusetts at Lowell forum titled "Climate Change: Local Solutions to a Global Crisis."

Nearly 1,000 energized citizens vied for standing room only space and queried, listened attentively, andcheered the congressman, Governor-elect Deval Patrick, Ian Bowles, the state's incoming secretary for energy and the environment, and a handful of faculty panelists from the School of Health and the Environment . A video clip made for the occasion by former vice president Al Gore welcomed and inspired the crowd.

Almost invariably, viable solutions to major problems are grown locally and exported. David Brower's admonition, "Think globally, act locally," is still valid today.

The powers in Washington, D.C., will take longer to learn.

DONALD MacIVER
Littleton