We know the Review-Journal just thinks of John Farley as just another overpaid public employee.

But we consider anyone with a doctorate from Columbia University specializing in laser spectroscopy of molecular ions well beyond a credible source to discuss matters of science.

With that bit of background, the UNLV physics professor becomes the inaugural entry into our new feature: Letters They Don't Print.

Dr. Farley doesn't like the RJ's assault on science and was spurred to write a letter after the paper sublet its Sunday editorial page cover to the oil industry.

This is what he wrote, and what they didn't print:

On Sunday, the RJ carried an article, reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, scoffing at manmade global warming. Author Richard Lindzen claims that even if carbon dioxide really is causing global warming, it's no big deal. He argues that since the imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation is only about 2 percent, it's not a concern.

Let's try this analogy: suppose that you eat every day "only" 2 percent more calories than you burn up: about 40 extra calories per day. In one year you'll gain 4 pounds, which is no big deal.  But after ten years, you will have gained 40 pounds, after twenty years, 80 pounds, and after thirty years, 120 pounds, which is a very big deal. A skeptic can say that it's "only" 2 percent extra per day, but over a long enough time, it adds up to a major problem.

Global warming is like that: the effects don't show up in one year or the next, but on a time scale of decades, they definitely do show up. The ice sheets in Greenland are melting, and the rate of melting is increasing with time. Antarctica is losing ice also. The sea level is rising, by about three millimeters a year.

Lindzen is a long-time global warming denier who claims that the link between carbon dioxide and global warming is unproven. Lindzen is also a smoker who claims that the link between smoking and lung cancer is unproven. Lindzen's standard of proof is so absurdly high that nothing can ever be proven. Lindzen is identified as an MIT professor. He has also been a paid consultant to Exxon-Mobil, a detail that the Wall Street Journal and the RJ thoughtfully omitted.

The same Sunday issue ran a column by Vin Suprynowicz, railing against "the global warming fraud", environmentalists, the EPA, public education, the New York Times, big government, and taxes.  Not much new here on this list of Stuff That Vin Suprynowicz Really Really Hates.  It just proves that the RJ did not run the Lindzen piece after a careful review of the science of global warming.  The RJ's motivation is ideological: if global warming is a problem, the government might have have to deal with the problem, which would lead to increased taxes. Therefore global warming must not be a problem.

Back in the real world, the main impact of climate change on the desert  Southwest is drought. The water level in Lake Mead has fallen a hundred feet in the last decade. Although this fact alone doesn't prove global warming, it is consistent with it.  Last year, researchers at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego gave 50/50 odds that Lake Mead may run dry by 2021, now only a dozen years away. That would drastically affect some 20-30 million people, including many people in southern California and everybody in the  Las Vegas valley.

John W. Farley
Henderson NV
Professor, UNLV Dept of Physics and Astronomy