To the Editor:
Re “What New York, and the World, Needs Now,” by Michael Kimmelman (Critic’s Notebook, Sept. 19):
A climate research center on Governors Island?
Nobody needs another architectural extravaganza on prime waterfront with a vista in the name of climate research. Real research gets done in offices, in laboratories and with field measurements all over the earth and its oceans and atmosphere, and those offices and laboratories can be built anywhere.
Architectural magnificence doesn’t do research; indeed the best laboratory buildings are usually industrial, because these are the buildings most suitable for laboratories, and the money saved on glamour and glass might even go into, you know, actual laboratory needs and doing research.
And then there’s another bald fact right now: New York City doesn’t need more climate research to know what it needs to do. Like everybody and everywhere else, cut carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
Don’t spend money building another Oculus (the architectural novelty that is both a transportation center and a shopping mall in Lower Manhattan), particularly in the name of climate science; spend money that actually does something.
Lee Harrison
Rotterdam, N.Y.
The writer is a retired climate and hurricane scientist.