In her In My View on June 28, the writer makes much of the fact that 97.1 percent of reviewed scientific papers agreed that climate change (it used to be global warming) was the result of human activity. Not mentioned was that this review covered the period 1991-2011, which obviously includes a large number of papers that were authored during a time when much less was known about the climate. This includes the well-documented fact that there has been no appreciable global warming in at least the last 10 years, calling into question the models that have been used to predict future temperatures.

Also ignored are the economic and political aspects of this issue. Academicians largely depend on grants to fund their research, and if there is no problem and thus no need to research ways of solving/preventing it, there is no money, so researchers therefore have a vested interest in keeping a problem alive. Those who would say there is no problem can lose their jobs.

Before we go down the road of cap and trade or carbon taxes, we need to consider the cost, heeding what President Obama said in 2008:

“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket … Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it — whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

Jeff Keller

Bend