Letter: Response to Skip Hellewell’s Aug. 25 column – Laguna Beach Local News | CPT PPP Coverage

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Skip Hellewell apparently learned nothing from the recent destructive storm Hilary, which caused flash flooding and horrendous mudslides that filled people’s homes and set rainfall records. He offers a long-debunked rationale that since the storm’s effects on Laguna Beach were not as bad as they might have been, one can conclude that climate models cannot predict events decades in the future.

The “logic” goes that since no one can predict down to each neighborhood exactly how much rain will fall on any given day amid a hurricane, how can it be possible to predict what the climate will do looking out 50-100 years or more? This is like claiming that since it is impossible to predict exactly where and when the first bubble will rise in a pot put on to boil, one cannot be sure it will ever boil – it’s just too uncertain. The timeframes, statistical methods, data points, etc., for predicting the weather and the climate are different. Hellewell wants to offer the dismissive “It’s complicated,” which he calls “unknownness,” instead of relying upon actual climate science and the remarkably increased sophistication and accuracy of climate modeling and attribution science.

Consider that as far back as the 1970s, scientists at Exxon predicted what atmospheric CO2 levels would be over the coming decades. According to Hellewell, they were just wildly guessing. However, the line they drew is exactly what happened – you can superimpose their predictive graph on the subsequent measurements. Hellewell cites a report from Dr. Kenneth Richard (not Richards), calling it peer-reviewed, that is alleged to show that out of 70 “catastrophic” predictions made by climate scientists since 1970, 48 have been proven “wrong,” and the rest will also fail. What Hellewell did not do was check his source.

Kenneth Richard has been making similar claims for years, and climate scientists routinely find numerous flaws and debunk them. Richard uses cherry-picking, misrepresentation, reliance upon original articles long after they have been critiqued and corrected, claiming “peer-review” when that is misleading, and other such tricks. The journal in which Richard’s article was published is obscure and not authoritative. If any reader wants to check on the accuracy of claims such as Hellewell is presenting, I strongly suggest they become familiar with websites that focus on identifying false claims. These include snopes.com, redgreenandblue.org, skepticalscience.com, ucsusa.org, climatefeedback.org, climatecrocks.com (on the snarky side, but solid science), climateexchange.caltech.edu and resurchify.com (for rankings of research journals).

It is also useful to do an internet search of any individual claiming to be an expert. Even the “Controversies” section on a person’s Wikipedia page can present persuasive indications of unethical and intellectually dishonest practices that erode credibility. You can’t do that with Kenneth Richard. He doesn’t have a Wikipedia page.

Gary Stewart, Laguna Beach

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