Dear Editor,
Following my previous note, Mr. Bertram presents Dr. Richard Lindzen as an authority on the matter of climate science and presents a link to a non-peer-reviewed website. He fails to mention Lindzen is paid by Peabody Energy (coal interests)[1], that he has offered no actual evidence to support his hypotheses, nor has any other scientist been able to find evidence to support those views. 20 years ago Lindzen was casting the tobacco industry as victim and apparently maintains today that there’s no link between smoking and lung cancer[2],[3].
Science is not a democracy, it cannot be done by petition or vote, and evidence is the currency. The plural of “opinion” or “view” is not “evidence”. To be clear, if there was evidence to support Mr. Bertram, it would not be discovered by somebody forwarding links from dubious websites or by paid mouthpieces of think tanks – it would be discovered by a team of accomplished scientists, survive peer-review and ongoing critique. Galileo’s discoveries were revolutionary. Galileo was right because he gathered evidence and did the math, not because he simply decided which radical opinions he preferred to listen to.
Mr. Bertram states he is not a scientist and yet considers he has the authority and understanding to evaluate “content” from online non-peer-reviewed sources, despite their financial support from the Exxon, etc. He demands respect and a seat at the table for policy discussions on what to do about the problems linked to a warming climate and the rising concentration of CO2. He risks being relegated to the sidelines and not taken seriously at all.
Jeff Goodman
