Letter: The rest of the story

Editor, Daily News:

Regarding Ben Bova's global-warming thoughts in his article about not acting when we know a crisis is looming, he clearly shows he is part of the apocalyptic doom-and-gloom media.

He states scientists have been warning the global climate is warming, and we should be prepared for significant climate change, i.e., "when sea levels start to rise steeply and every coastal city in the world is threatened, and Florida and the Gulf coast start to go underwater ... ."

Ben knows that scientists also have told us that these alarmist predictions are very suspect. They are based on global climate models run through computers that produce a wide range of results from controversial theoretical inputs. Some scientists skeptical of apocalyptic results do not now believe a crisis is looming based on a rise of human-induced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Ben and his fellow alarmists must only be considering the most dire projections of warming effects. They never mention the other computer-produced scenarios which many renowned atmospheric physicists and climatologists believe are more likely to occur, are less costly to adopt sensible policies to combat and would allow the world to more efficiently use resources to adapt to climate change and other problems until we have more hard data pointing the way to real solutions for global warming.

After all, Ben, we are talking about trillions of dollars. But books which show how global warming might inundate the Earth probably would sell better than hard scientific data and real solutions.

Jim Van Pelt , Naples