Regarding the story "Global warming may impoverish 100 million: World Bank" in the Nov. 10 issue, it is inaccurate to say that "extreme weather (is) tied to warming."
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 their latest assessment report released Sept. 27, 2013, IPCC scientists concluded that they had only "low confidence" that "damaging increases will occur in either drought or tropical cyclone activity" as a result of global warming.
In 2013, the NIPCC concluded the same saying, "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 need to harden our societies to these inevitable events by burying electrical cables underground, and reinforcing buildings and other infrastructure. Yet, of the almost $1 billion that is spent globally every day on climate finance, only 7 percent of it goes to helping people adapt to climate change today. This is the real climate crisis.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.