LETTERS: DEBATE ON GLOBAL WARMING? YOU BET!

To the editor:

I read with great interest Peter Kinder's commentary on global warming in the Nov. 30 issue of the Southeast Missourian. He has touched on a hot issue whose resolution will affect society far into the future. However, his remarks fall short of his goal to get the facts. I believe that my chemical engineering degree allows me to understand this issue far better than most politicians.

First of all, Kinder starts out by considering only short-term events such as a couple of cold winters and the Gulf War. What is important to look at is long-term trends. Over the last century, the average global temperature has increased one degree. Perhaps the best argument against global warming was that the model, which accounted only for carbon dioxide, predicted a rise of four degrees, far greater than the measured result. As Kinder stated, scientists were divided over the reality of global warming. However, a couple of years ago researchers began to look at the impact of sulfates, another product of fossil-fuel combustion. They found that sulfates had a cooling effect, which, when plugged into the model, gave a result nearly identical to the actual temperature rise.

It should be noted that other models predicting environmental catastrophe have proven uncannily accurate. Ozone depletion skeptics were finally convinced when a plane flew into the ozone hole over Antarctica, showing that chlorofluorocarbons were indeed the culprits. Long a skeptic of acid rain, the severely pockmarked buildings I saw in East Germany seven years ago made a believer out of me. While on that trip, I met a young woman who could not work in her own hometown due to a respiratory ailment caused by severe pollution, the result of decades of environmental neglect.

Kinder's portrayal of the global warming contingent as anti-capitalist is not only a red herring, it is simply not true. Reduced energy consumption does not hurt the economy if it is brought about via conservation. The environmental laws enacted in the 1970s, some of which dealt with energy conservation, did not put companies out of business. Indeed, they spawned an entire industry, which has contributed millions of jobs and billions of dollars to our economy.

Instead of still being divided, as Kinder suggests, last week's summit in Japan demonstrates the worldwide consensus that the greenhouse effect is a very real threat. The only debate now is what to do about it. Many countries are proposing far stricter preventative measures than the United States.

I welcome and accept Kinder's challenge to a televised debate of the issue. I relish the opportunity to blow these conservatives right out of the water, dealing them a defeat they will not soon forget and eliminating their decadent, illogical thinking from the face of the earth forever.

STEPHEN S. SCHADE

Mt. Prospect, Ill.