Right-wing conspiracy against climate change

To the editor:

Are the climate change deniers so desperate that they’re disguising their press releases as letters to the editor?

Tom Harris’ Wednesday letter of gives a thumbs-up to the reviews of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, of whom one member is physicist S. Fred Singer, best known for his denial of the dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke. According to SourceWatch.org, their 2008 Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change was the work of 23 authors, some of them not scientists.

The NIPCC should not be confused with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has more than 2,300 members, most of whom are scientists.

SourceWatch.org also lists that Tom Harris’ group, the International Climate Science Coalition, has received funding from the Heartland Institute, which itself has received funding from ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers, who are heavily invested in the petrochemical industry and strong financial supporters of right-wing political causes.

It was just last month when this very newspaper, on the front page, published an article about the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, rebutting many of the claims of climate change deniers.

I’ve said it before: It never fails to amaze me how the Review-Journal can report on the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and deny it on the editorial page.

Steven F. Scharff

Henderson

Same old story

To the editor:

After reading Rep. Joe Heck’s Thursday op-ed on the need for a balanced budget amendment, my only comment is: "Physician, heal thyself."

Don’t give us that nonsense about "stop me before I kill again." If you are not going to do what you were sent to Washington to do, get out of the way and we will send someone else. We’re tired of that same old story.

Michael Henderson

Las Vegas