Letters: Climate change - Longmont Times-Call

Letters: Climate change - Longmont Times-Call

The dangers of climate change – and of policies designed to prevent it

Dr. Judith Curry has recently published a book on climate change, “Climate Uncertainty and Risk, Rethinking Our Response.” Near the beginning of the book, she makes an interesting observation that many believe there is likely to be much future loss and damage associated with climate change, either from climate change itself, or from the policies designed to prevent climate change. This relatively short, but quite comprehensive, book with extensive documentation, well over 1,000 footnotes, provides insight into where the most danger seems to be, from climate change or from the policies designed to prevent climate change.

Dr. Curry is an eminent climate scientist and well qualified to write such a book. She received a Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Chicago in 1982 then held faculty positions at CU, Penn State, and Purdue before serving as Head of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech from 2002 to 2013. She has authored over 180 scientific papers, written several books and provided expert testimony to Congress. In recent years, she has devoted much of her time to CFAN, a private company that provides research and consulting services to manage weather and climate risks.

Dr. Curry’s book covers a lot of ground, too much to adequately summarize here. One example is looking at the overall 2050 global surface temperature scenarios by combining IPCC likely warming scenarios with likely cooling ones of natural climate variability. It certainly casts doubt on the need for the current big push for net zero by 2050.

But there is much more to the book. Dr. Curry’s aim is to lay out a path for determining how to engage with our environment and support human well-being while responding to climate change. This is guidance our country and especially our political leaders appear to desperately need.

Carl Brady, Frederick