To the Editor:
Re “U.N. Climate Panel and Its Chief Face a Siege on Their Credibility” (front page, Feb. 9):
That fossil fuel industry-financed forces are continuing their campaign to undermine the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chief scientists should not distract us from what we know about our climate.
Two physical findings stand out. In the last 50 years the world ocean has accumulated 22 times as much heat as has the atmosphere (data provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce). It is this repository of heat—through processes like evaporation and ocean overturning—that drives the changes in weather we are experiencing: heavier precipitation events, sequences of large storms, bitter cold spells and prolonged droughts in some regions.
The I.P.C.C. 2007 report also found that winds have changed—specifically circumpolar westerly winds (those blowing from the west) in both hemispheres. This ominous sign means that weather fronts and weather patterns are less stable.
Our society, security and the health of the global economy depend upon a stable climate. Getting off fossil fuels is the first, necessary step toward achieving climate stabilization.
Paul R. Epstein
Boston, Feb. 9, 2010
The writer, a doctor, is associate director at the Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School.
Note from KBJ: The letter writer imputes bad motives to those who are skeptical of climate change. It can't possibly be because the science is bad; it has to be because of bias or sinister interest. And what does the letter writer's medical training have to do with public policy? He has no evaluative expertise, either in the moral realm or in the political realm. His expertise is factual, and by all appearances he has an ax to grind, so even his factual expertise can't be trusted. By the way, I thought change was good. Hope and change, remember? Let the climate change. We will adapt. Isn't it interesting how conservative progressives are when conservatism serves their political purposes, the main one of which is getting control of people's lives?
Note 2 from KBJ: The letter writer's website shows that he has "worked for" the IPCC. Why is this not disclosed by the New York Times? This is a blatant conflict of interest. The man is defending the IPCC from its critics without disclosing his ties to the IPCC. Do these people have any integrity? Does anything go, as long as it serves their political purposes?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 