Letters to the Editor: Secretary’s willingness to tamper with past climate reports is dangerous

To the editor: U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is intending to review and potentially alter the nation’s next climate science report (“Energy secretary says Trump administration may alter past National Climate Assessments,” Aug. 7). He’s already removed the climate assessments from the government websites. He has accused the previous reviews (even the ones made during the first Trump administration) as being “politically biased.”

Just wondering if Wright has actually looked outdoors recently or at least kept abreast of the weather reports. Has he not seen the spate of unprecedented tornadoes razing towns and communities? Or witnessed the deadly floods throughout the country? Or the wildfires from hell in the West? Or the unbearable heat waves hitting the Northeast? Or the approaching hurricanes that signal widespread death and destruction on the way?

It is clear that Wright is on a leash, eager to do the bidding of his master — old ”Drill, Baby, Drill!” His stated intentions, as well as his removal of the climate assessments from years past from governmental websites, make him complicit in the disaster that is to come.

Lanore Pearlman, Claremont

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To the editor: I see that Wright, previously the CEO of a company that did fracking, says that the government climate reports have been politically driven and are not accepted by “a credible economist or scientist.”

I am sure he is right that some economists do not wish to contemplate the possibility of climate change, but I would challenge him as to what the majority scientific opinion might be. Hundreds of scientists have studied the issue. Most published articles note that change is occurring.

The evidence is everywhere: shrinking glaciers in every part of the globe, shrinking polar and Greenland ice sheets, the melting of the Russian tundra, bleaching coral reefs, longer, hotter summers, disruption of rain patterns, even the opening of the Northwest Passage.

The actual debate appears to be whether human activity is causing it. In other words, conservatives do not believe we can stop the process.

Erica Hahn, Monrovia

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To the editor: Wright’s changes might misinform some, but if our extreme weather-related events continue at their enhanced pace, eventually the public will demand action. Those events are devastating and deadly to the affected population and the economic damage is astounding.

I find it disingenuous and devious that the Energy secretary is considering changes to previous scientific-based reports. Going back to scrub past reports won’t change the facts that our climate has changed and fossil fuel emissions are exacerbating this change.

Jonathan Light, Laguna Niguel