To the Editor,
Re: Climate change denial isn’t about science, or skepticism, March 8.
David Suzuki misleads readers when he writes: “the revelation that Ottawa’s Carleton University hired Tom Harris, a PR man for a number of “astroturf” groups with a mechanical engineering background, to teach a course on climate change.”
It is old news, not a ‘revelation’, that I taught a climate course at Carleton for the past three years. I was hired because of my teaching and science background as well as my decade of working with the course originator and primary author, Tim Patterson, a leading academic and climate researcher at Carleton.
I am not a ‘PR man’. Like Suzuki, I engage in public education. I have solid training and experience in thermodynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics, all relevant to understanding the causes of climate change.
How does Suzuki’s biology background equip him to comment so loudly on the immensely complex atmospheric/oceanic climate system?
Suzuki should be promoting an intellectual climate that encourages constructive debate.
Tom Harris
International Climate
Science Coalition
Ottawa