The following letter is from a longtime member of the skeptical community who has for years strongly criticized climate science and the Skeptical inquirer for reporting and defending it. Given the letter’s topical nature in referring to the recent series of intense hurricanes that hit the United States, we are publishing it here together with responses by two noted scientists and climate experts, Michael E. Mann and Mark Boslough.
I thank the editor for publishing Norman Carlson’s letter “Confusing Liberals and Skeptics?” (September/October 2017, p. 66). There has been an unhealthy paucity (if not absence) in SI of critical inquiry into politically “hijacked” issues such as climate change.
Having personally just dodged not a mere bullet but a bomb with Hurricane Irma, following on the heels of Harvey’s record-breaking destruction elsewhere along the Gulf coast, I wish to make a few politically incorrect meteorological points.