Beth Lipton with Public Health — Seattle & King County (who was featured in last issue’s article, “Constantine, others discuss climate change”) is mistaken to imply that climate change is leading to an increase in extreme weather events.

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 explained, “in no case has a convincing relationship been established between warming over the past 100 years and increases in any of these extreme events.”

Instead of wasting money vainly trying to stop extreme weather events from happening, we should encourage governments to harden their societies to these inevitable events by burying electrical cables underground, and reinforcing buildings and other infrastructure. Yet, of the $1 billion that is spent globally every day on climate finance, only 6 percent of it goes to helping people adapt to climate change today (ref: Climate Policy Initiative, San Francisco). This is the real climate crisis that should concern Lipton and others.

Tom Harris

Executive director

International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)