Gwynne Dyer's op-ed "'Climategate' and disbelief: Go buy a cooler" ( Tribune , Jan. 29) denies that the "climategate" revelations from hacked e-mails at the the University of East Anglia are relevant to the global warming debate. His column is full of logical fallacies.

Dismissing "climategate" as simply a reflection of the "nastiness" of "scientific politics" is a classic red herring. The hacked e-mails demonstrate that some of the most influential proponents of global warming were censoring dissenting research and distorting data to fit their thesis. In support of the hypothesis that humans cause global warming, Dyer points to the supposed consensus among scientists. Aside from the fact that the hacked e-mails discredit precisely the claim that there is a consensus among scientists, appealing to consensus is an example of the argumentum ad populum fallacy: because most people (or scientists) believe a claim, therefore it must be true.

History is full of examples of a scientific consensus later proved completely wrong.

Since Earth's climate is always getting warmer or cooler due to natural processes independent of human activity, the burden of proof is on the supporters of the human-caused global warming hypothesis, not its skeptics.

Peter Goldman

Salt Lake City