Unsettled

Steven E. Koonin

What climate science tells us, what it doesn't, and why it matters

p1 Introduction

p1 General discussion of the excesses in reporting and the media.

p1-2 Research literature and government reports state clearly:

• Heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900.
• The warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years.
• Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century.
• Greenland's ice sheet isn't shrinking more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago.
• The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of the century.

Discusses the distorted picture we get from the media, which he calls "the narrative" among other things. "The narrative": "We've already broken the climate and face certain doom unless we change our ways."

Shows high respect for the climate research and describes the path from:
research literature --> assessment reports --> summaries of the assessment reports --> media coverage.

Describes the information process a "long game of telephone" and not only the public but policy makers don't get the whole story, but concedes that "getting the story straight isn't as easy as it sounds" "I should know. That used to be my job."

p3 Describes his professional background:

• As a physicist, did computer modeling of atomic and nuclear subjects
• 2004:Started computer modeling of climate and energy technology.
  • Served as chief scientist for BP
  • Obama's undersecretary for the Department of Energy, investigating investments in energy technology.
• 2013: APS update public statement on climate.
• 2014: Workshop he convened to "stress test" the state of climate science
  • 6 climate experts and 6 physicists (including himself).
  • p4 "surprised and shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed"
• p4 "1. Humans exert a growing, but physically small warming influence on the climate. The deficiencies of climate data challenge our ability to untangle the response to human influences from poorly understood natural changes.
• 2. The results from the multitude of climate models disagree with, or even contradict, each other and many kinds of obvervations. A vague 'expert judgment' was sometimes applied to adjust model results and obfuscate shortcomings.
• 3.Government and UN press releases and summaries do not accurately reflect the reports themselves. There was a consensus at the meeting on some important issues, but not at all the strong consensus the media promulgates. Distinguished climate experts (including report authors themselves) are embarrassed by some media portrayals of the science. This was somewhat shocking.
• 4. In short, the science is insufficient to make useful projections about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it. "

p4-5 After the 2014 meeting, was convicted enough to write a "Saturday Essay" for the Wall Street Journal outlining some of the shortcomings of climate research. Drew thousands of online comments, majority supportive, but less popular in scientific community. "As the chair of a highly respected university earth science department told me privately, 'I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, but I don't dare say that in public.'" Other long-term scientific colleagues were outraged that he would "give ammunition to the deniers". One who tried to get him fired actually "acknowledged that most of the uncertainties I'd mentioned were well known and much discussed among experts."

p5 Writing six years after this, "increasingly dismayed at the public discussions of climate" "Climate alarmism has come to dominate US politics, especially among Democrats" Mentions Biden and Kerry and a proposed two trillion dollar fight against this 'existential threat to humanity'

p6 Recounts fondly his one-on-one personal interaction with Richard Feynman when he was a student at Cal Tech, including playing bongo drums on one occasion with Feynman's band. Greatly respects Feynman and his scientific integrity. Quotes Feynman's 1974 commencement speech.

• Advertising: Wesson oil will not soak through food.
  • True, and neither will any other oil soak through at a particular temperature.
• But, at another temperature all oils will soak through, including Wesson oil!
• The advertising statement, though true, fails the test of scientific integrity.

p8 Lauds Stephen Schneider, climate researcher, for a statement on a "double ethical bind" where a scientist desiring to reduce climate risk needs to encourage public participation, and is tempted to use "scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have." (1989)

p8 Gives examples of such statements

p9 Gives examples old enough to have been proven wrong.

Koonin's response "It is the height of hubris for a scientist even to consider deliberately misinforming policy discussions in service of what they consider to be ethical. This would seem obvious in other contexts .."

p9-10 "Philip Handler, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences,identified the problem in a 1980 editorial that resonates eerily four decades later: 'Difficulty arises in the scientific community from confusion of the role of scientist qua scientist with that of scientist as citizen, confusion of the ethical code of the scientist with the obligation of the citizen, blurring the distinction between intrinsically scientific and intrinsically political questions. When scientists fail to recognize these boundaries, their own ideological beliefs, usually unspoken, easily becloud seemingly scientific debate.'"

p10 Koonin "We're the only people who can bring objective science to the discussion, and that is our overriding ethical obligation."

p10-12 Preview of the chapters of the book.

p16 "... for a scientist, I believe it is a responsibility, almost an act of conscience, to portray without bias just how settled - or unsettled - the science truly is."

Part I, The Science

p18-20 Discussion of uncertainty and probability.

p21 "Climate science is a lively field. Thousands of researchers supported by billions of dollars work to observe the climate, understand it, and project its future. ...publishing more than ten thousand [articles] each year."