The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Fossil fuel industry groups want to slow progress on climate change

by Christy Gerrits - 04/14/15 6:21 PM ET

It has come to my attention that The Hill published blatant misinformation on climate change written in an op-ed by William O’Keefe (“Forecast the Facts, merchants of smear,” April 1), who has no interest in climate change, just in slowing any progress made to curtail carbon emissions as it might mean government involvement in industry.

He has no educational background in a subject pertaining to climate change, but he does have a vested interest in protecting the fossil fuel industries from government regulations. He has been closely involved with the George C. Marshall Institute and the Global Climate Coalition, both organizations that represent the fossil fuel industries.

{mosads}Climate change is a very complicated subject that has serious implications for us all. Many communities are already looking ahead at how they can mitigate some of the impacts of rising sea levels, salt water infiltration into aquifers, and severe and protracted droughts. This is what we all need to be doing, along with looking at how we can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

Please do not let the few climate change skeptics or deniers use your publication for their dissemination of doubt and misinformation. Instead, use it to inform your readers about climate change and what we should be doing to try to slow it down.

From Christy Gerrits, Gillette, Wyo.

Obama wrong on link to climate

Both the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) illustrate that President Obama is wrong to associate weather extremes with climate change (“Obama seeks to link climate change to health,” April 7).

In 2012, the IPCC asserted that a relationship between global warming and wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes and other extreme weather events has not been demonstrated. In 2013, the NIPCC explained “in no case has a convincing relationship been established between warming over the past 100 years and increases in any of these extreme events.”

Instead of wasting money vainly trying to stop extreme weather events from happening, we need to harden our societies to these inevitable events by burying electrical cables underground and reinforcing buildings and other infrastructure.

The president should work to ensure plentiful, dependable, cheap energy sources such as coal-fired electricity. Instead he does the opposite, discounting coal and promoting wind and solar power, the most expensive and least reliable sources available. This is as irrational as a ship captain ordering his crew to man the lifeboats because a major storm is approaching.

From Tom Harris, executive director, International Climate Science Coalition, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Science does not care about bias

I am disappointed to see that The Hill has given William O’Keefe of the George C. Marshall Institute space for denying climate science on its Contributors blog (“Forecast the Facts, merchants of smear,” April 1).

A right-wing think tank by definition is biased; science, unlike politics or religion, does not care what your bias is. The laws of physics do not care about our preferences. If burning fossil fuels warms the planet, that is true no matter what the ideology.

Those who expose O’Keefe’s bias are not guilty of “smear.” They are guilty of telling the truth.

From Philip Machanick, Grahamstown, South Africa