What About Gravity? WSJ Readers Respond to Denialist Pseudoscience

Science literate readers respond to Wall Street Journal Op Ed that questioned first order physics of thermal expansion.

Briefly, former scientist, tobacco apologist, and dotard Fred Singer questioned whether sea level was rising due to a warming planet. Must be something else…

If you have not seen, and you want to see a media outlet deeply embarrass itself – go here.

Fortunately, science.

Would the Journal run the op-ed “Objects Are Falling, but Not Because of Gravity”? That’s pretty similar to climate contrarian Fred Singer saying The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change” (op-ed, May 16).

No, ice is not accumulating on Earth—it is melting. No, Antarctica isn’t too cold for melting—warming oceans are eroding the ice from beneath, destabilizing the ice sheet. And no, legitimate scientific conclusions are not reached in op-ed pieces, but through careful peer-reviewed research.

That research shows that sea levels are rising and human-caused climate change is the cause. Don’t take our word for it; help yourself to the mountain of scientific literature showing as much. When water warms, it expands. When ice warms, it melts. To deny these facts is not just to deny climate change. It is to deny basic physics.

New York City experienced an additional 25 square miles of flooding from the approximately one foot of sea-level rise that has occurred due to human-caused warming. Without concerted efforts to reduce carbon emissions, it could experience as much as eight feet by the end of the century—permanently inundating most of Wall Street.

Asst. Prof. Andrea L. Dutton

University of Florida

Gainesville, Fla.

Prof. Michael E. Mann

Penn State University

University Park, Pa.

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Fred Singer leaves out any real evidence to refute research attributing the measured sea-level rise almost exactly to the measured thermal expansion of seawater and glacier melt.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.)

Newport, R.I.