Dear Editor:

In response to Mr. Cort Gifford’s LTE in the Feb. 22 edition of the Reader: One of your questions was “Where are all these scientists?” As a former Princeton graduate student in the geosciences, I’ll give you examples of where they are.

The Princeton Environmental Institute, a “center of excellence for environmental research and teaching,” has 22 faculty members, most of whom are directly involved in climate change research. Their interests cover topics such as: carbon mitigation; climate policy; climate futures; ecosystem analysis; cycling of nutrients and greenhouse trace gases; political theory and climate change; climate change and impacts; global interactions among the biosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere; climate and carbon cycle interaction; ocean and climate modeling; Southern Ocean carbon and climate observations, and modeling; oceanic cycles of climatically important chemicals such as carbon dioxide; carbon dioxide capture and storage; extreme weather events; and detection and attribution of carbon emissions, to name some. This institute is globally recognized as a center of excellence in climate science.

“The Cooperative Institute for Climate Science (CICS) ia a collaboration involving Princeton University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). Established in 2003, CICS engages more than 60 faculty, researchers, and students from Princeton to explore the science of climate change and earth systems modeling.” The GFDL climate model was adopted by the National Weather Service of the United States, to predict not only long-term climate changes, but also local weather. These institutes contain some of the finest minds on the planet, who dedicated their careers to learning the truth about climate change. Their results are based upon facts.

These examples are some of the work going on at research centers in the USA, and around the world by thousands of reputable scientists, who do know what they are talking about. These scientists have shown that climate change is happening, and that humans are causing it.

I hope that I have illuminated the real state of affairs. The earth is in trouble, and massive efforts are required to mitigate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. I’m afraid your opinions just do not stand up to the data.

Richard Warren
Wrenco