Letters to the editor, Nov. 2

Climate change editorials should be backed up by fact

In response to Gerard Harbison's column titled "Global warming science questionable":

As surprised as I was to see the Daily Nebraskan publish a column on anthropogenic climate change without any consultation from UNL's own Department of Applied Climate Science, I was even more surprised to see the page on which it was published — not the science and technology page, not as a feature, not even as a piece of local interest — but as an opinion column.

Surely the matter of climate change — whatever your position in the debate — is a matter of verifiable physical reality, not a matter of opinion. While the science may or may not be settled, it is a science nonetheless, and the appearance of this material in an opinion piece gives the appearance of being an end run around the journalistic and scientific obligation to support contentions with fact and to air the opposing views of experts.

I applaud the DN for taking on the exciting and contentious subject of climate change — a subject of which we should all be more educated — but shouldn't such efforts place more of an emphasis on our local experts in climate science and less on the unsupported opinions of a professor with no expertise in that field? Shouldn't those efforts be held to a higher standard of fact-checking than appeared to be the case in that column?

Justin Payne

senior Biochemistry major