Document re8mmaaJVBd36J5aVL9D8Xqoe

Wed Jun 07 15:34:21 EDT 2017 Hope.Brian@epamail.epa.gov FW: correspondence from MIT Vice President for Research Zuber To: CMS.OEX@epamail.epa.gov; Bowman.Liz@epamail.epa.gov OPA From: Maria Zuber (sent by Paul R Schierenbeck) [mailto:mtz@mit.edu] Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2017 2:47 PM To: Pruitt, Scott <Pruitt.Scott@epa.gov> Cc: Jackson, Ryan <jackson.ryan@epa.gov> Subject: correspondence from MIT Vice President for Research Zuber Please see the attached letter and attachment from VPR Maria T. Zuber. Thank you, /PRS Paul R. Schierenbeck Executive Assistant to Maria T. Zuber Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Office of the Vice President for Research 77 Massachusetts Ave 3-234 | Cambridge MA 02139 schieren@mit.edu | (617) 324-8177 liliT Massachusetts Institute of Technology June 7, 2017 Maria T. Zuber Vice President for Research E. A. GriswoldProfessor ofGeophysics 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 3-234 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307 Phone 617-253-3206 Email mtz@mit.edu The Honorable Scott Pruitt Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington DC 20460 Dear Administrator Pruitt: As you know, last week the White House circulated a set of talking points that made reference to information from a 2015 study from MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change to justify President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. The relevant researchers at MIT have expressed concerns with the way these talking points presented the information; I am attaching a statement outlining these concerns. I write today regarding a related, but separate, issue. In an interview on Fox News Sunday on June 4, during an exchange with the program's host, Chris Wallace, in which Mr. Wallace challenged the way the White House presented the information from the 2015 study, you said: "Look, it's very fishy to me that MIT updated their study or their results after we started citing it." This is simply not the case. The information cited in the White House talking points comes from the Joint Program's 2015 Energy and Climate Outlook. That Outlook report has been updated annually. But the most recent edition was released in September 2016, not in the last week.1 I am troubled by your suggestion that our researchers altered a published study in response to a political debate. This did not happen: No such updates were made. The 2015 and 2016 versions of the Outlook that are available to the public today are exactly the same documents that were available to the public a week ago. 1 The 2016 Outlook is available at https://globalchange.mit.edu/publications/signature/2016 food water energy climate outlook. Pruitt - page 2 MIT takes research integrity extremely seriously. If you had contacted us before making the comment, we would have been pleased to ensure that you had complete and accurate information. I encourage you to feel free to contact my office anytime you need a clarification about MIT research, or if you need any other information about climate science and solutions. Through rigorous, careful study, scientists at MIT and around the world have built an overwhelming body of evidence that climate change is real, that human activity is the primary cause of it, and that it poses substantial risks to current and future generations. I invite you to visit our campus in the coming months and meet with students, faculty, and researchers who are helping all of us to better understand this global challenge and how we might best address it. In the meantime, I think you'll find the 2016 Outlook to be a comprehensive and vital resource. Sincerely, Maria T. Zuber cc: Mr. Ryan Jackson Chief of Staff Office of the Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington DC 20460 Attachment Attachment MIT issued the following statement on Thursday, June 1, 2017. A set of talking points circulated in support of President Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement included this statement: "The [Paris] deal also accomplishes LITTLE for the climate "According to researchers at MIT, if all member nations met their obligations, the impact on the climate would be negligible. The impacts have been estimated to be likely to reduce global temperature rise by less than 0.2 degrees Celsius in 2100." The researchers in MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change who led the relevant analysis find this statement to be misleading, for two reasons. First, the 0.2 degree figure used in the talking point reflects the incremental impact of the Paris Agreement compared with the earlier Copenhagen agreement. If you instead compare the impact of the Paris Agreement to no climate policy, then the temperature reduction is much larger, on the order of 1 degree Celsius -- 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit -- by 2100. This would be a significant reduction in the global temperature rise, though much more is needed if the world is to achieve its goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less. Second, the analysis accounts only for countries' pledges under the Paris Agreement, assuming no further strengthening of the commitments in years after 2030. The Paris Agreement is a milestone of the ongoing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is committed to ongoing annual meetings to regularly revisit and ratchet up nations' climate goals, making them more ambitious over time. The relevant MIT researchers believe that the Paris Agreement is an unprecedented and vital effort by nearly 200 countries to respond to the urgent threat of global climate change. ###