Letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

John G. Roberts Jr., Chief Justice
U.S. Supreme Court
1 First St. NE
Washington, DC 20543


Chief Justice Roberts:

I write this letter, my first and dare say my last to a Supreme Court justice, in my 76th year. Before I begin the substance of this communication, some background information is required. I am Catholic, male, married for 52 plus years with three children and six grandchildren, and earned a PhD in 1973 from a brick and mortar institution, working as a full-time, tenured track university professor before abandoning academia to earn a living in the real world. Many years ago, I was an appointed a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission and later was publically elected as an alderman (running on the Republican ticket) in the Michigan municipality in which we lived. I am not an attorney nor have I ever taken courses or instruction in law. I have been retired for ten years from my final position as a senior urban planner with an international consulting firm. In terms of full disclosure, this letter is a cri de coeur and is but one result of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.

In my eyes and those of most Americans, judges must be fair, objective, impartial, unbiased, open-minded, and non-partisan. Those qualifications should apply in spades to Supreme Court justices; at least that’s the theory. At this point, I ask that you to recall Judge Kavanaugh’s second appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee as he repeatedly insulted sitting U.S. Senators and unrepentantly cast wild, baseless aspersions on their political party. Perhaps you can imagine those characteristics that all good judges should have as applying to him. I can not.

Now that Kavanaugh has joined the Supreme Court, it is time for Americans to finally acknowledge that the Court’s true identity as a political institution, one driven by personal values, transparent partisanship, and blatant conservative ideology. Throughout great swaths of American history, the Supreme Court has been aggressively pro-conservative, pro-big business, and openly prejudiced against people of color and the poor. I’m certain citations are not needed to support that statement; you know them far better than I.

In that long tradition, the Roberts Court has been and continues to be intent on protecting and enhancing the rights and privileges, wants and desires of right-wing conservatives; flagrant examples include its refusal to rein in the corruption that characterizes our political system by permitting unlimited spending on campaigns by the rich and powerful and by giving companies an unprecedented right to impose their religious views on employees. The Court has actively turned its back on the rights of progressives, organized labor, women, and people of color. You proved that contention with past decisions and now that Kavanaugh has brought his open and unapologetic partisan animus to your team those biases will be increasingly obvious to all citizens, many of whom, of course, given their political affiliations, will be nothing less than ecstatic about that state of affairs.

Congratulations to you, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and fellow right-wingers who crafted the political strategy that has made certain the Supreme Court will faithfully execute pro-conservative positions. Together you have succeeded in building a Court majority on a foundation of political partisanship and reactionary ideology. The only good thing is, at my age I most likely will not be around to witness the full flowering of your abandonment of the judicial principles most Americans hold dear.

I leave you and your fellow conservative justices to revel in your solid majority and to continue your concerted efforts to force America to the right while disingenuously holding up your hands in public protestations of faux impartiality.

Climate Change Skepticism and Science

By the early 2000s, a small group of scientific critics contended that global warming studies had been methodologically flawed and concluded it was premature to form a solid conclusion as to the existence and possible causes of global warming. One of those skeptics, world renown scientist Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California—Berkeley, thought the skeptics’ arguments had merit and determined to put an end to that uncertainty by establishing Berkeley Earth, an independent, scientifically-based 501(c)(3) non-profit to investigate the global surface temperature record. Berkeley Earth was partly funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, whose founder is a well-known funder of climate deniers, and by the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research, which was founded by Bill Gates. Muller was the lead scientist in Berkeley Earth’s Surface Temperature (BEST) study that systematically and objectively addressed major concerns or potential biases that global warming skeptics had identified by gathering and analyzing worldwide historical land temperature measurements that had been collected from around 1750 and extended continuously to the present, a period of about 250 years.

BEST’s data analysis focused on the most likely cause(s) of global warming rise by plotting the upward temperature curve against suspected climatic “forcings”. Its analysis of the warming effects of solar activity found that the sun’s warming contributions, which constituted a major factor in the opinion of climate change skeptics, have been “consistent with zero.” Volcanic eruptions were analyzed and found to have caused minor variations in the temperature rise in the period 1750–1850, but “only weak analogues” in the 20th Century.

After the global surface temperature record study was complete, Muller and his co-author, physicist Robert Rohde, reached the following conclusion: “Much to my surprise, by far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.” Muller emphasized that the match between the data and the theory did not prove that carbon dioxide is responsible for the warming, but the good fit makes it the strongest contender. “To be considered seriously, any alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does carbon dioxide.”

The study’s results mirrored those obtained from previous studies by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Great Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis, and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The study also found that, contrary to claims from many climate change skeptics and deniers, data selection, data adjustment, the urban heat island effect, and poor station quality did not bias the results obtained from earlier studies.

Please note that the Berkeley Earth analysis did not depend on large complex global climate models that have been harshly criticized by climate skeptics for what are claimed to be hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. The conclusion that warming is a result of human activities is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

In an effort to achieve full transparency, all study data, analytical techniques, computer coding, and findings are available on the BEST website so they can be examined freely by scholars from scientific disciplines that study climate change. Here's the web site:
http://berkeleyearth.org/