You've got mail, skeptical mail

Last week, my colleague Hisham Zerriffi and I each received an envelope full of photocopied articles, from the Wall St. Journal and other sources, and various scribblings all attacking the scientific evidence that humans are primarily responsible for recent climate change.

Receiving mail from an ardent skeptic of climate change is not unusual for us scientists. Over the years I've got small envelopes, large envelopes, handwritten notes, phone calls, all-cap e-mails and no shortage of nasty online comments. I'll guess that Hisham and I were not the only people studying climate change to receive copies of this particular material (let me know in the comments).

This package was unique, however, in one important way. The return address - no name was given - was "One Physics Ellipse" in College Park, Maryland.

A retirement community for physicists, you ask? Well, sort of.

One Physics Ellipse is the Corporate Headquarters for the American Institute of Physics. The AIP, like most scientific bodies on the planet, has as policy endorsed the scientific evidence that humans are contributing to climate change.

While it is true that not all of its members agree on that statement, scientists and certainly physicists are not exactly pros at speaking in one voice, I do find it odd to receive a package of "skeptic" material, much of which was downright silly (CO2 emissions don't "rise"), from the actual headquarters.