I ordinarily do not write into the The Daily Targum arguing about "big issues" like global warming, since I have more meaningful things to do, like stare at a wall. But the opinion editor's recent column, "Stop Global Whining," isn't just another smug, self-assured global warming denial. The editor literally misrepresents the facts in one of the most shockingly inaccurate columns I have ever read in the Targum in the past three years.
Let's begin with the unimportant points: the editor casually asserts - among other things - that nuclear power faces a problem of limited resources (true, if you consider about 5 billion years' worth of uranium as "limited"), that hybrid cars aren't perfect and produce pollutants as well (gosh, I had no idea. Now that I know that a Prius doesn't produce sunshine and cupcakes as exhaust, I guess there's no reason to buy it anymore), that "maybe all the money dumped into selling you that new hybrid car would be better used developing fusion power with hydrogen isotopes as a fuel source" (because, hey, as long as we haven't developed fusion power yet, might as well keep driving that Hummer!) and that - most stupefying of all - a mini-Ice Age actually caused the Irish Potato Famine.
The editor also claims water contributes over 95 percent of the greenhouse effect and uses this as the cornerstone of his argument against global warming. For the record, that's just not true. It makes up about 90 percent of the greenhouse gases by volume, sure, but its residence time in the atmosphere is around 7,000 times less than carbon dioxide - about 10 days as compared to 200 years. Thus why, for example, Ramanathan and Coakley show that water vapor contributes at most about a third of the greenhouse effect. Unlike carbon dioxide, it serves more a feedback role than a forcing role in our atmosphere. (The remainder of the editor's argument - that since burning fossil fuels don't lead to more water in the air, humans are therefore obviously not the main cause of global warming - hardly dignifies a response.)
Finally, the editor dismisses the foremost scientific body in the world working on the problem, mentioning that the "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has had several members resign in protest, stating that the IPCC bases its recommendations on flat-out bad science." Allow me to correct this: when the editor refers to "several," what he really means is "one," Chris Landsea, back in 2005. The other 4,000 or so scientists who have worked on it for the last 18 years have apparently had no problem with, say, "blindly assuming that all CO2 entering the Earth's atmosphere will stay there." While I'm not much of a physicist, I think the editor need not worry that all that carbon dioxide will somehow float off into space on its own.
But the point of this letter isn't really to take a side on the topic (though by now even President George W. Bush has acknowledged that climate change needs to be addressed). The point is rather the astonishingly careless factual misrepresentations committed in the column not just by another student, but by the opinions editor himself. It is disappointing to me, and it reflects very poorly upon the Targum.
Edward Fu is a Rutgers College senior majoring in computer science. His column "Grain of Salt" appears on alternate Mondays. He welcomes comments at edfu@eden.rutgers.edu.
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