Dear Tweeters and Jack,

I am disappointed that my friend Jack Bowling has accused me of
misrepresenting one of his postings. This is a serious accusation.
Misunderstanding is one thing, and I am sorry if I was guilty of that.
However, "misrepresentation" is deliberately twisting something said
by another, to make it sound like the person said something quite
different.
Let me state in no uncertain terms that I consider
misrepresentation to be a reprehensible practice, and that I have
never deliberately misrepresented a posting by another correspondent
on TWEETERS or any other newsgroup.
E-mail has serious shortcomings as a medium of communication when
it is used as a substitute fir face-to-face conversation. One of these
shortcomings is that misunderstandings can take days to clear up,
rather than minutes, because of the inevitable delay in reading and
responding to earlier postings.
When Jack states that I have "once again" misrepresented a posting
of his, perhaps he was referring to my comments on a posting of his
concerning Ducks Unlimited projects. I described Jack's posting as a
"condemnation" of DU, when a milder term such as "criticism" would
probably have been more appropriate. This may have been an unfortunate
choice of words on my part, but it was NOT an intentional
misrepresentation of Jack's position.



-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Bowling <jbowling at direct.ca>
To: WAYNE WEBER <WAYNE_WEBER at bc.sympatico.ca>
Cc: tweeters at u.washington.edu <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Date: Tuesday, August 17, 1999 8:34 AM
Subject: Re: Birds and global warming


>On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, you wrote:
>> Dear Tweeters,
>>
>> In the attached posting, sent at 08:13 on Aug 15, Jack Bowling
>> stated, in part: ..."there is lots of debate about global warming.
>> Not whether it is occurring or not- that is IRREFUTABLE [emphasis
>> mine]-- but whether it is anthropogenically forced or otherwise"...
>> I hesitate to begin a debate on global warming with a
professional
>> meteorologist like Jack. However, I consider myself an amateur
>> climatologist, and I have considerable knowledge of the subject. I
>> have a serious problem with the statement above, especially the
>> "irrefutable" part.`
>(big snip)
>
>In the interests of keeping a non-bird posting short, I would only
say
>that Wayne has (once again) misrepresented a posting. "Global
warming"
>has indeed occurred in the past. I offer this short summary on the
>case for anthropogenic forcing of the earth's tropospheric
temperature
>regime:
>
>- ice cores from around the world confirm that the rate of
temperature
>increase in the 20th century is greater than anytime in the past
>6-10,000 years.
>- CO2 levels are currently at around 335 ppm by volume and increasing
by
>1.5-2 ppm per year with most of the increase since the turn of the
>century; CO2 is a greenhouse gas that we humans produce in prodigious
>quantities.
>
>Many have added these two together to state that humans must be
forcing
>the ongoing global warming since the current rate of warming is
greater
>than past records of warming during periods when humans were not
>a factor would support. However, as Wayne states, an equal number of
>people believe that it is just part of a natural cycle.
>
>Either way, the main case for not just kicking back and enjoying our
>upcoming tropical warmth but instead trying to mitigate any human
>contribution to the warming trend is such:
>
>- we do not know if there is a critical point of CO2 concentration
>beyond which the whole process would accelerate even more than
current
>rates, i.e., there could be a CO2 flashpoint which would trigger
>even more massive rapid warming (and which would lead to rapid
>desertification, swamping of coastal cities, death of vegetation by
>drought and/or insect damage, etc.).
>- given the above, we humans should endeavour to mitigate our
>greenhouse gas production.
>
>Nowhere in my original post did I state where I stand on the argument
of
>anthropogenic forcing of the current global warming, although I did
in
>a private post to Don B. So for the record, I will state that I
>believe that human contribution to overall global warming is likely
>only giving a small boost to an otherwise quite natural cycle. It is
>mostly our limited geographical time sense that colours our
perception
>of the event. However, I do believe that consequences of runaway
>warming would be catastrophic for our and other species so that
>mitigation strategies are the wisest course regardless of whether we
>are fouling our own nest.
>
>--
>Jack Bowling
>jbowling at direct.ca
>