Man-Made Global Warming

Open letter to the editor of Chemical and Engineering News:

Dear Dr. Rouhi,    I was extremely disappointed with your editorial in the November 12 issue.    You appear to be taking up the same drum beating previously used by your predecessor Rudy Baum. I can partially excuse Rudy. He is a political hack, but I initially gave you more credit as a scientist.    The issue is man-made global warming.    In your editorial, you dwell on the anecdotal instance of Tullo's house on Staten Island and seem to use that as a basis for stating that, "Weather events of super storm Sandy's magnitude and devastation are increasing in frequency". That seems to be a rather silly conclusion, if you relate it only to Tullo's house. However if you are relating it to more general experiences, what are they? The directors of the TV weather channel do not seem to support that view.
    If we want to talk about anecdotal instances, I can understand your inability as a young person to recall the Hurricane of 1938 or the Dustbowl in the '30s. However I lived through both those times, and although I was personally not affected, I recall many of the reported details.
    The Hurricane of 1938 missed Manhattan and Staten Island. It went a little farther East and smashed Long Island. It changed the topography, such that the Department of Interior had to redraw topographical maps of Long Island.
    The Dustbowl was of longer duration. Fortunately, PBS is now running a several-part series on TV. I don't think that you need to watch the few hours of presentation, but you might look at some patches and get a better idea of what it was about. See if you can find the sections on the dust clouds, which are very impressive.
    Notice that those two events, one of short duration and one of longer duration, occurred more than 70 years ago. I don't know what the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was at that time, but we could look it up. Why did it take 60 years to come to some conclusion, likely erroneous, that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration are responsible for climate change? Sandy was no worse than the Hurricane of '38 and the Dustbowl of the '30s.
    As a scientist, you have an obligation to scientifically support any generalizations you may make. What data do you have which shows a connection between global warming and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration? If you can find no data which logically support your theory, you should stop beating the drum.
    One of my Associates said, "What we are facing is the adoption by political elites of policies to mitigate it [global warming].  They believe that it is "settled science" and are using the political process to promulgate laws and regulations intended to provide some control over global warming.  It is largely out of the hands of skeptical scientists to control the political process.  It will only be controlled by reducing the political power of those elites".
    Are you part of the problem?