Class News

Tony Lee ’64 making “Good Trouble” in Wayland, MA

November 4, 2020

Unless you haven’t read any news on our Class website recently, you know that Tony Lee is leading a relentless charge on climate change, via a Zoominar series titled, “Can We Stop Climate Change?” Recently, Tony wrote an article for his local paper, the Wayland Town Crier. Here’s Tony’s account of what transpired:

At the first meeting of our “Can We Stop Climate Change?” Zoominar, we presented and discussed a slide, “What Climate Change Deniers Are Saying:”

• It’s all a hoax,
• The science isn’t proven,
• Weather cycles are normal, etc.

For homework, we asked participants to read America Misled: How the fossil-fuel industry deliberately misled Americans about climate change, by John Cook, Naomi Oreskes, and others.

In late September I submitted an article to the Wayland Town Crier, “The Simple Case for Climate Change,” which was published in the Crier in their October 1, 2020 edition. My original article was posted on the Class website in September.

Two weeks later, in the October 15, 2020 Crier, a letter appeared with the title “Prepare for climate change because we cannot stop it,” written by Tom Harris and Dr. Jay Lehr from Ottawa, Canada. Their letter (see below) is an example of how America is misled.

If you feel moved to write a letter to the Crier, please send it to mwyner@wickedlocal.com.

Several others have already sent letters. You can read the complete series of letters by clicking on the links below.

• Original letter by Tony Lee
• Response by Tom Harris and Jay Lehr
• Response by Tony Lee
• Letter by Margie Lee
• Letter by Bari Boyer
• Letter by Janot Mendler de Suarez

Original letter by Tony Lee

The Simple Case for Climate Change

October 1, 2020

The evidence for global climate change is overwhelming. We know how it happened, what the implications are, and what can be done to mitigate and eventually neutralize the impact on the planet and human civilization.

We know:

• Climate change is real;
• Climate change is caused primarily by humans; and
• We can mitigate the damage.

According to an April 2020 Gallup poll, 51% of Americans are “concerned believers” who attribute global warming to human actions and take the threat seriously. That means that 49% of Americans are not “concerned believers.” Of the 49%, according to Gallup, 28% are the “mixed middle” who hold a combination of views, and 21% are “cool skeptics” who express little to no worry about global warming and attribute higher temperatures to natural environmental changes.

51% versus 49%. Why is there such an even split, despite the fact that 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree on human-caused warming?

Sometimes we overthink and overanalyze issues. Other times we allow misinformation and disinformation to cloud our understanding and judgment. The basic science of climate change is really very simple.

We’ve known about the climate-change problem for at least 30 years, but the problem began two-and-a-half centuries ago with the Industrial Revolution. Nations built factories and engines, ran them on fossil fuels, and thereby produced goods and services that improved most lives on the planet. Burning carbon-based coal, oil, and gas released an estimated one million gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Although much of this CO2 was absorbed by the oceans, land, and growing plants, substantial amounts remained in the atmosphere. The following graph shows the dramatic spike in atmospheric CO2 generated by human beings during the Industrial Revolution over the last 250 years.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, CO2 stayed at approximately
280 parts per million (ppm) to the mid-1700s, at which point
it started to increase steadily to the present level of 415 ppm

Records of average global temperature have been maintained for the past century and a half and show that the planet is heating up. Over the past 50 years alone the rate of increase has dramatically accelerated. In 2020, scientists declared “Nine of the ten warmest years in human history occurred in the last decade,” and they essentially made the same declaration in the year 2010 and before that in the year 2000. The following graph shows the increase in temperature over the past 170 years.

Average global temperature increased by approximately 1.3°C (2.3°F) over the past 170 years

Through the study of ancient air bubbles trapped in ice, oxygen isotope ratios which reveal temperatures, and other indirect measures of climate, scientists have shown that atmospheric CO2, global temperature, and sea levels are tightly correlated over the past 400,000 years.

CO2, average global temperature, and sea levels rise and fall together

It is also clear that relatively small changes in average global temperature cause large changes on the planet. For example, during the last ice age 18,000 years ago, my home near Boston, MA was under two miles of ice, despite the fact that average global temperature was only about 4.4°C (8°F) cooler than at present.

Business-as-usual climate models, assuming a perpetuation of today’s levels of fossil-fuel consumption, predict a 4°C (7°F) increase in average global temperature by the year 2100. Climate models predict that at 4°C, full-scale global collapse of human societies is probable.

The most serious concern can be seen in the upper right corner of the above triple graph where CO2 levels are shown to be 415 ppm. For the previous 400,000 years (and probably longer), all of life and evolution occurred in a relatively narrow range of CO2 and global temperatures. Now, at 415 ppm, we are 30% higher than the highest level of CO2 during that time period. From a geological time perspective, this is happening at lightning speed. Even after a temperature change of only 1.3°C, we have seen the dramatic melting of polar ice, the increase in wildfires and devastating storms, and the extinction of some species of birds and other animals. Animals, plants, and insects cannot adapt to this rate of change. We are experiencing, and will continue to experience, collapses of ecosystems, extinctions of species, and collapse of human societies.

We can mitigate the damage. We have the necessary technology and financial resources to “bend the curves” and thereby avert the coming ecological disaster. We need to reduce carbon emissions immediately and eventually attain net zero carbon emissions. But we lack the will to change our attitudes, lifestyles, and policies, and to redirect our wealth to where it is really needed.

We must understand that this is a matter of enormous urgency.

Tony Lee
Wayland MA

Tony Lee, Yale BA ’64 and Rutgers MBA ’69, was a licensed Certified Public Accountant. For the last 25 years of his professional career, he practiced as a forensic accountant and expert witness primarily in construction claims and real-estate disputes. Tony is a member of Elders Climate Action (Massachusetts Chapter), and has facilitated a series of webinars titled “Can We Stop Climate Change?” He lives in Wayland, MA.

Response by Tom Harris and Jay Lehr

October 15, 2020

Prepare for climate change because we cannot stop it

Accountant Tony Lee wrote in his Oct. 1 article, “The simple case for global climate change,” “Climate change is caused primarily by humans … The basic science of climate change is really very simple.”

In reality, trying to unravel the causes and consequences of climate change is arguably the most complex science ever tackled. Professors Chris Essex (University of Western Ontario) and Ross McKitrick (University of Guelph) write in their award-winning book “Taken by Storm,” “Climate is one of the most challenging open problems in modern science. Some knowledgeable scientists believe that the climate problem can never be solved.”

If it were true that humankind had the ability “to mitigate, and eventually neutralize, the impact [of climate change] on the planet and human civilization,” as Lee writes, then we would have to be able to stop not just our own contribution, however small it may be, but changes in all the natural factors that influence climate a well. Here is a partial list of those factors:

1. Our solar system’s movement through the galaxy.
2. Nearby supernova cosmic ray emissions.
3. The shape of Earth’s orbit.
4. Earth’s rotational tilt.
5. Earth’s rotational axis wobble.
6. Variations in the Sun’s activity.
7. Movement of the Earth’s crust in relation to its molten core.
8. Energy flows from ocean to air and oceans to land.
9. Planetary cloud cover.
10. Ocean currents.
11. Land use change.
12. The amount of water that evaporates from oceans, lakes and rivers.
13. Carbon dioxide emissions from the oceans and land.
14. The reflectivity of the Earth’s surface, especially snow and ice-covered areas.

Despite the fact that we obviously have no control over any of this, that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do. We need to prepare for and adapt to climate change as it happens.

Yet, the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative demonstrated in its November 2019 report that, of the average annual climate finance expenditures of over a half trillion dollars over the two-year period of 2017-18, only 1/20th of it went solely to adaptation. Because of the unjustified confidence of people like Lee that we can forecast future climate states and even stop them from changing, almost all the rest went to trying to stop climate change that might someday happen.

This is immoral, effectively valuing the lives of people yet to be born who may someday be affected by climate change more than those in need today. It is also in direct contradiction to the approach agreed to in Copenhagen where participants at the 2009 UN climate conference committed to a 50/50 funding split between adaptation and mitigation.

None of this will be a comforting thought for people who want simple answers, but science is often like that. While it is our best tool for trying to understand the natural world, it is not magic – it can only give us what is possible. And, in this case, the science is so immature that the only sensible approach is to prepare for whatever nature throws at us next.

Tom Harris, executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and Dr. Jay Lehr, senior policy advisor to ICSC.

Response by Tony Lee

October 16, 2020

I’m flattered that professional climate deniers located in Ottawa Canada and supported by the conservative Heartland Institute would catch wind of my October 1 article, “The Simple Case for Climate Change,” and consider it to be a threat to their fossil-fuel backers.

Make no mistake about it. Tom Harris is a hired gun to sow doubt and confusion among the general public and thereby stall any significant efforts to combat climate change. Harris could be Exhibit A in the tell-all book, America Misled, how the fossil fuel industry deliberately misled Americans about climate change, by John Cook, Naomi Oreskes, and others.

Harris and Lehr list fourteen “natural” factors that we have no control over, implying that these are more determinative in causing increased carbon dioxide and global warming. It’s rubbish. 97% of climate scientists have concluded that climate change is real and is primarily caused by human activity.

I will double down on my simple approach to climate change. Once you have reviewed the three charts in my article, the whole argument can be reduced to ten words:

• It’s real
• It’s us
• Experts agree
• It’s bad
• There’s hope

America needs to focus on the hope, and that comes through action. Reduce carbon emissions to net zero. Keep all fossil fuels in the ground. More subsidies for solar and wind renewables. We have already developed dozens of other technologies ready to be employed. We know what to do but we lack the willower — partly because professional climate deniers continually sow doubt. 

Tony Lee
Wayland MA

Letter by Margie Lee

October 16, 2020

A response to letter to the editor by Tom Harris and Jay Lehr

Efforts to address climate change have for decades been derailed by the likes of Tom Harris and Jay Lehr who are supported by industry interests. A little research is all you need to verify this.

If you are concerned about climate change, you’ve probably seen articles entitled “Exxon Knew” describing Exxon’s campaign to deceive people about what they knew decades ago: that burning fossil fuels would cause climate change, a warming planet. Indeed, they are being sued by multiple parties for damage caused by their lies.

Many of us recall how the tobacco industry lied about smoking and cancer. For the past few decades, some of the same actors have been assisting fossil-fuel companies in spreading disinformation about the connections between CO2 emissions and a warming planet.

Harris and Lehr’s letter is full of nonsense. Tony Lee’s article (“The simple case for global climate change,” October 8) is in line with approximately 97% of peer reviewed scientific findings. There are complexities to this issue but the basics are knowable and solid. Our atmosphere has a “blanket” of gases which moderates global temperatures and has been stable for thousands of years. But, since the start of the industrial age and the use of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases have added a layer to that blanket, trapping additional heat in our atmosphere.

Average global temperature has increased over 1 degree Celsius. Scientific consensus is that temperatures cannot increase more than 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius (over preindustrial levels) without incurring serious climate disruptions. We are already witnessing the predicted heat, drought, severe storms, wildfires, flooding, acidification of the oceans, disruption of the jetstream (due to changes in the Arctic), etc. that are the hallmarks of rising temperatures. Despite nonbinding agreements in the Paris Accord, countries are not sufficiently limiting carbon emissions and we are on a trajectory for at least a 4 degree increase in the next 80 years. What does that mean? Most likely that the planet will be inhospitable to humans if we ignore the crisis or listen to snake-oil salesmen.

The stakes are high and the time is short. How many wildfires, severe hurricanes, intolerable heat spells, drought, and flooding will it take before enough of us act on this? What kind of world will we leave our children and grandchildren? Let’s not be distracted by people who are just in it to enrich themselves.

Marjorie Lee
Wayland MA

Letter by Bari Boyer

I have been following the Letter to the Editor interchange between Tony Lee of Wayland and Tom Harris of Ottawa, Canada. Here are my reactions:

Some people argue that the climate changes we are recording and experiencing are not the result of human activity. They argue that the universe is constantly in flux and that variations are natural. While I agree that human activity may not be the sole cause, I would like to ask the following question: Given that we humans do, in fact, expel pollutants into our atmosphere (primarily carbon dioxide for our energy production and methane from our industrialization of animals for food), how could we expect NOT to have some effect on our environment?

Another argument that is put forward is that whatever effect our actions have is so minute that it doesn’t make much of a difference. While I believe this argument is a veiled attempt to discourage and disempower us from making lifestyle and public-policy changes, my answer is “So what?” Whatever efforts we make to try to alleviate the situation are similarly minute in comparison to the risk of doing nothing.

People differ in their opinions as to whether we need to simply adapt to climate change or whether we can reverse the damage. To me this is not an either/or choice. We have adapted our everyday lives to COVID-19 while doctors are learning better ways to treat the malady and researchers are working with vigor on finding a vaccine. We need both approaches, adaptation and mitigation, to combat climate change.

In sum:

• Climate change is real, whatever its source.
• Humans are manipulating our natural world.
• Changing our behavior to adapt and mitigate is a small price to pay compared to the risk of doing nothing.

Bari Boyer
Chilmark MA

Letter by Janot Mendler de Suarez

Tony Lee wrote a great and genuinely caring letter about the climate crisis.

It is regrettable that it was subjected to a snide put-down from a couple of climate-change deniers in Canada — who are also NOT climate scientists — they are linked to polluting industrial interests, and have no business calling out Tony Lee as an “accountant” for accurately explaining in simple English the global scientific consensus of thousands of recognized experts in climate and geophysical sciences.

Also concerning is the obvious trolling of local US media like the Town Crier with a sneakily well-crafted message which masks the writers’ pro-fossil-fuel agenda with a seemingly pro-climate bait and switch argument for more investment in adaptation.

Don’t be fooled: they are trying to foment confusion about climate change by saying it is a natural phenomenon more likely due to cosmic wobbles so we shouldn’t stop burning fossil fuels or try to reverse destructive land use, we should just accept climate change and focus on adapting to it.

It is a shame that the Town Crier gave free press to this scientifically unfounded, very likely paid and politically motivated long-distance attack on a letter from a Wayland resident who shared his own learning to promote constructive action in OUR community through OUR local paper, on an issue impacting OUR townspeople with more extreme heat, rainfall and drought, causing more stress on our water resources, more risk of mosquito and tickborne diseases, more power outages and property destruction and cleanup costs from storms.

Going forward I would encourage the Crier to be on the lookout in order to uphold the dignity of those in our community who make the effort in civic discourse, and to protect the Crier from being used as a pawn by giving free press to big-moneyed special-interest-group propaganda masquerading as “climate science” — which it most certainly is not.

Janot Mendler de Suarez
Wayland MA