The New Republic printed a letter in its 14 February 2005 issue responding to an article in TNR that Dan Sarewitz and I had last month on climate change and disasters following numerous claims that the Indian Ocean tsunami should motivate action on climate change. Here is the letter:

“In their article on the Indian Ocean tsunami’s “real cause,” Daniel Sarewitz and Roger A. Pielke Jr. did a good job of severing the perceived connection between global warming and all natural disasters (“Rising Tide,” January 17). They failed, however, to provide the simplest and most damaging critique to the argument that the Indian Ocean tragedy is somehow linked to global warming: Tsunamis have practically nothing to do with the atmosphere. They usually result from undersea seismic activity, though collapsing landforms and glaciers can cause them, too. A 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra will produce a tsunami regardless of the atmospheric temperature or composition.

Daniel J. Smith
Iowa City, Iowa”

We did not see fit to make the point that global warming did not cause the tsunami because everyone (in their right mind) knows that (except perhaps the genius at TNR who came up with the subtitle to the article!). Our focus was on the more interesting and difficult challenge of evaluating policy options available to prepare for future disasters.