The fossil fuel industry does no good for its already badly damaged reputation when its spokesman tries to minimize the credentials and question the integrity of one of our country’s leading scientists, Robert Howarth of Cornell University.

Russell Jones of the American Petroleum Institute wrongly claims that Howarth is working outside his field (“Study: Shale gas dirty,” April 13). Howarth is, in fact, a biogeochemist, with a career of work assessing the flows of carbon, nitrogen and other elements in our environment.

He is chairman of the SCOPE Biofuels Project, an effort chartered by the International Council of Science to provide an objective, science-based analysis for policymakers on the environmental consequences of biofuels, including greenhouse gas emissions.

Howarth is also the co-chairman of the Committee on Energy and Environment of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, an umbrella group of this country’s 1.4 million professional scientists. He is the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell, an endowed distinguished chair, awarded for his work on environmental chemistry.

When Robert Howarth publishes a peer-reviewed study on greenhouse gas emissions, thoughtful, well-informed people listen. The gas-drilling industry should listen, too. It is the science that matters. When you attack Howarth’s character and not his work, your behavior should alarm us all.

Howarth is an “activist” only in the way a scientist is supposed to be active — as an engaged citizen in the critical issues of our day.

WILLIAM H. SCHLESINGER

President

The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Millbrook