Global Warming “systematically exaggerated”?

In letters-to-the-editor in March 6, 2006 Wall Street Journal (subscription required) comments on economist Thomas Schelling's acceptance of the case for global warming ("It's Getting Warmer," editorial page, Feb. 23, 2005).


John Pugmire of New York writes:
- “He reaches his position by the selective exclusion of inconvenient facts.”
- “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Dr. Pachauri has similarly besmirched the reputations of David Henderson and Ian Castles for suggesting that the IPCC's 100-year gas emission forecasts were unreasonably high.”
- “Despite widespread support from the economic community, IPCC claims it doesn't have time to change its computer climate models to reflect less inflated assumptions.”
- “Major scientific journal …. Nature …. went so far as to editorialize in January that the IPCC's macroeconomic assumptions ‘ought really to be discarded as wishful thinking’."
- “James Hansen, whose original congressional testimony sparked the global warming furor, admitted in Scientific American two years ago that he had deliberately exaggerated the dangers of global warming (but was now arguing for more realism): ‘Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue . . ‘."
- “I'd say the doubts are being systematically suppressed while the claims are being systematically exaggerated.”

Neil Houston of St. Augustine, Fla. writes:
- “Thomas Schelling … states that ‘greenhouse warming is not clearly established by the temperature record’."
- “Later he says, ‘I find the case for prospective greenhouse warming to be almost beyond doubt’."