Editor,
This is in response to Mic Mead’s letter to the editor entitled “Christie running in the wrong party” (published Aug. 6). In that letter, Mr. Mead makes a number of inaccurate assertions concerning climate science and Christie’s understanding of the peer-reviewed literature. He suggests that you can’t be a Republican if you accept the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. Two hundred words are insufficient to address all of the misleading assertions in his letter, so we’ll discuss the most important.
In 2016, John Cook et al. published an article entitled “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming.” They reviewed six independent peer-reviewed studies and found a 97 percent consensus that humans are causing recent global warming. This was based on 11,944 abstracts of research papers. They further found that the level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science. It turns out that Mr. Mead’s 31,000 opposing “scientists” were scientists only if your definition of a scientist is anyone with Bachelor of Science degree, rather than a degree in climate science.
However, Mic’s most important question stands, can you be a Republican if you believe in climate science?
Dave and Ginny Kelleher, Westfield
