In a recent op-ed letter in the Beacon, Ed Berry claims that a poster paper he gave at a recent scientific meeting shows that human-caused CO2 emissions have so little effect on atmospheric CO2 that such emissions cannot possibly cause climate change. He further asserts that stopping all human CO2 emissions would not stop climate change because only nature can cause it.
But Berry’s poster doesn’t support any of those claims. It contains several completely false assertions and unsupported assumptions. Further, the only empirical evidence he offers is based on data published by other scientists that Berry completely misinterprets and misrepresents, demonstrating that he doesn’t even understand what the data are about. As a result, the conclusions he draws from his analysis are demonstrably incorrect.
To bolster his argument that he is right, Berry claims that 80 percent of the people who looked at his poster paper at the meeting agreed with it and that many climate scientists worldwide support it. He asserts that this shows amazing acceptance of his paper. But that doesn’t mean that any of those individuals who agreed with or accepted it are experts on the subject and qualified to judge whether Berry’s conclusions are supported by the data he analyzed. The program of the meeting where he presented his paper shows that only a few papers were presented dealing even remotely with the specific subject of Berry’s poster. Hence, it’s unlikely that all, if any, of those who agreed with his paper were qualified to judge its scientific veracity. Also, he fails to mention that his poster was not subjected to a peer review for scientific credibility prior to his presenting it and that a manuscript of his work on which his poster paper was based was rejected for publication in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, according to what Berry stated on his own blog site. For him to imply that agreement with his poster paper by some people of unknown expertise is evidence that his conclusions are scientifically valid is not how science works to advance knowledge.
Berry also claims the real solution to climate change is better education and that the physics in his paper is so simple that it should be taught in all our schools. But being simple doesn’t mean it’s correct. No one would argue against better education as part of our efforts to deal with climate change, but that doesn’t mean educating students or the public on Berry’s bogus ideas about simple physics that neither explain nor predict the ongoing global rise in atmospheric CO2 and its effect on climate.
The scientific meeting where Berry presented his poster paper was the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society. That society’s position statement on climate change is that many of the observed changes in climate over the past half century are beyond what can be explained by natural climate variability, that the dominant cause of these changes is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including CO2, and that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is rising principally as a result of fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation. Berry’s paper contains no credible scientific evidence or arguments that refute or casts any doubt about any of those positions that have been agreed to by the vast majority of members of that professional scientific society.
Jerry W. Elwood
Kalispell