Karen Riley’s gushing Feb. 26 Commentary section review of Sen. Al Gore's book, “Earth in the Balance" (“Primer on the Green Side"), underscores the folly of having non-science writers critique environmental publications. There is nothing in Mr. Gore's book or in his various alarmist presentations on talk shows around town that is painstakingly objective.

To the best of my knowledge, there has been no survey of atmospheric scientists to indicate who agrees, or disagrees, with whom.

But the Science and Environmental Policy Project, which is supported by the Bradley, Smith-- Richardson and Forbes foundations, just last week began a mail survey of U.S. atmospheric scien- tists on the global-warming issue. While responses are only just beginning to come in, we have al- ready heard from more than a dozen top atmospheric scientists from the National Climatic Data Center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and from university research centers at Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arizona State University, the University of Virginia and others.

All of these scientists strongly agreed that current catastrophic global-warming predictions are unsupported by the scientific evidence and that they are based on theoretical climate models that cannot be relied upon and are not validated by the existing climate record.

Moreover, it is highly unlikely that Mr. Gore knows how many dissenting scientists there are, since he seems to go to great length to avoid them.

Mr. Gore was scheduled to appear on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Jan. 27 with atmospheric scientists S. Fred Singer, the director of this project. Mr. Singer is not only the man who designed the currently used satellite instrument for measuring atmospheric ozone but was the first to point out that population growth would inevitably increase methane—an important greenhouse gas—in the atmosphere. He is also one of those who discounts the global-warming models.

When Mr. Gore learned that Mr. Singer was booked for the show, his response was that he "could not appear under those circumstances," and the segment was canceled. (Mr. Gore and his publicist were more successful a week later, however, when Larry King agreed to let him on the show alone and unchallenged.)

Mr. Gore's "spiritual," "almost holy" book notwithstanding, global warming and global ozone depletion are still speculation, not fact. The American people will be poorly served if costly fed- eral policies are thrown together on the basis of incomplete science. The result can only be a fur- ther crippling of the U.S. economy and the unnecessary destruction of more American jobs.