Letter to the editor regarding atoms for peace and clean power

Op-ed was published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle online March 25 and in print March 28

April 4, 2016 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Tom Harris. Photo courtesy of Tom Harris

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To the Brooklyn Eagle:

It is wrong for Frank Fraley to make a link between extreme weather and global warming.

This is one of the few areas of agreement between the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

In 2012, the IPCC asserted that a relationship between global warming and wildfires, rainfall, storms, hurricanes and other extreme weather events has not been demonstrated.

In 2013, the NIPCC concluded the same saying, “in no case has a convincing relationship been established between warming over the past 100 years and increases in any of these extreme events.”

The National Climate Data Center reveals that extreme weather state records for New York are spread throughout the past century, with no recent increase. Here are some of the records:

The state’s maximum temperature was 108 degrees in 1926. The minimum temperature was -52 in 1979. The maximum 24-hour precipitation was 13.5 inches in 2014. The maximum 24-hour snowfall was 49 inches in 1900.

Yet, on the false premise that there has been a supposed increase in extreme weather events caused by global warming, President Barack Obama wants to end America’s use of coal, your country’s least expensive and most plentiful power source. The U.S. gets 37 percent of its electricity from coal. New York has the third highest electricity prices in the U.S., largely because it makes little use of coal for power generation.

It is worrisome for us here in Canada, and indeed across the free world, when our primary defender is bent on crippling itself in this way.

Sincerely,

Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech.)
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada