Book Review: Unsettled by Steven Koonin
“Climate and energy are complex and nuanced subjects. Simplistic descriptions of ‘the problem’ or putative ‘solutions’ will not result in wise choices… I began by believing that we were in a race to save the planet from climate catastrophe. Since then, I’ve evolved to become a public critic of how ‘The Science’ of climate science is presented.”
About the Author
Steven Koonin is a physicist and former undersecretary for science in the Obama Administration's Department of Energy where he guided the government's investments in energy technologies and climate science, and former Chief Scientist for Beyond Petroleum (BP) in charge of advancing their renewable technology efforts.
Unsettled is a book about scientific integrity, and I believe Mr. Koonin has done a noteworthy job of writing this book in a descriptive manner rather than a prescriptive one.
While clearly acknowledging that Warming is happening – far from being a climate denier – he brings much-needed caution to the faulty world of climate science.
“Even if this book is error-free, alas, I’ll be attacked for writing it. Some will question my credentials, saying I’m not “a climate scientist.” In other words, that I am not formally trained in the earth sciences, even though I’ve published several papers in the field. In truth, climate science involves many different scientific fields, encompassing the quantum physics of molecules and the classical physics of moving air, water, and ice; the chemical processes in the atmosphere and ocean; the geology of the solid earth; and the biology of ecosystems. It also includes the technologies used to “do” the science, including computer modeling on the world’s fastest machines, remote sensing from satellites, paleoclimate analysis, and advanced statistical methods. Then there are the related areas of policy, economics, and the energy technologies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
As predicted, Ad Hominem attacks have peppered Mr. Koonin, even though all his points are backed up with research from the very same sources that Climate Alarmists like to lean upon, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization.
Instead of continuing to write a review of the book, which I found difficult to do given its depth, I have chosen to highlight some of the high points below. If you enjoy detail, this is the book for you.
Wesson Oil
Gone are the days when journalism is trusted. As The Social Dilemma pointed out, the media is now incentivized by corporate greed and they've become nothing more than click-farms. To generate all those clicks, headlines have become increasingly more divorced from reality with bold claims that do not match the body of the article. They deceive in order to increase sales, just like Wesson Oil.
Wesson Oil ran an advertisement, proudly stating that it doesn't soak through food. What they don't tell you is that no oils soak through food within certain temperatures and all oils will soak through food (including Wesson Oil) if heated past certain temperature thresholds.
The Double-Ethical Bind
Koonin highlights the double-ethical bind as one of the reasons we find scientists being willing to engage in these kinds of deceptive practices. Politicians, scientific institutions, scientists, activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the public within the book - with specific examples - contribute in their own way. The Double Ethical Bind is described as early as 1989 by prominent Stanford climate researcher Stephen Schneider like this:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but—which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
As Koonin describes, this willingness to bend the truth – to persuade rather than inform – is particularly troublesome within the scientific community. “There is nothing at all wrong with scientists as activists, but activism masquerading as The Science is pernicious. We scientists shouldn't be selling cooking oil." Other climate leaders have expressed similar willingness to have the ends justify their means:
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
“Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve.”
Koonin argues this is wrong.
“It is the height of hubris for a scientist even to consider deliberately misinforming policy discussions in service of what they believe to be ethical””
On Fear
Koonin echoes the same sentiments that I express in my Open Letter, that we have an Alarmism problem. Those in power are preying upon people’s ill-founded fears. Here are but a few falsifiable headlines from news outlets more interested in harvesting your clicks than they are The Science: MarketWatch, The Hill, The Washington Post, Scientific American, and USA Today.
“Climate alarmism has come to dominate US politics, especially among Democrats, where I have otherwise long felt most comfortable politically. The 2020 Democratic presidential primary saw each candidate trying to outdo the other with over-the-top statements about Climate Emergency and Climate Crisis increasingly divorced from the science.”
It’s music to my soul that Mr. Koonin joins me in pushing back against this false and dangerous fear narrative. Koonin suggests in his book that the research literature and government report summarizing the research are not at all what you’ve been led to believe. The climate actually looks like this:
Heatwaves 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.
Record-high temperatures are becoming rarer.
Hurricanes show no sign of human influence.
Greenland's ice sheet isn't shrinking any 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.
When Koonin tells people this, they get downright hostile, and even those in the scientific community fear speaking out as Koonin bravely has. The Chair of a highly respected University earth sciences department privately told Koonin, "I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, but I dare not say it in public." Unsettled highlights the testimony of Carl Wunsch, a prominent oceanographer from MIT, as but one example of the issue facing our scientific institutions:
“The central problem of climate science is to ask what you do and say when your data are, by almost any standard, inadequate? If I spend three years analyzing my data, and the only defensible inference is that “the data are inadequate to answer the question,” how do you publish? How do you get your grant renewed? A common answer is to distort the calculation of the uncertainty, or ignore it all together, and proclaim an exciting story that the New York Times will pick up. A lot of this is somewhat like what goes on in the medical business: Small, poorly controlled studies are used to proclaim the efficacy of some new drug or treatment. How many such stories have been withdrawn years later when enough adequate data became available?”
If those in the scientific community fear speaking up to inform, rather than persuade, and peer review The Science, is that not a scientific pandemic?
“Open debate is at the heart of the scientific process; it is absurd that scientists should fear being labeled antiscience for engaging in it.”
In case you weren’t aware – I wasn’t myself – on March 7, 2019, Senator Schumer (together with Senators Carper, Reed, Van Hollen, White-house, Markey, Schatz, Smith, Blumenthal, Shaheen, Booker, Stabenow, Klobuchar, Hassan, Merkley, and Feinstein) introduced Senate bill S.729, which literally reads:
. . . to prohibit the use of funds to Federal agencies to establish a panel, task force, advisory committee, or other effort to challenge the scientific consensus on climate change, and for other purposes.
The Example of Hurricanes
Unsettled has no shortage of graphs and data to back up each of Mr. Koonin’s points. In fact, he invites you to not take his word for anything and go research every claim in his book yourself. I’ll focus on but one of the examples to demonstrate how detailed his research goes. We are told that as the earth warms, hurricanes will become more frequent and more severe. The National Climate Assessment (NCA2014) reads this way:
The intensity, frequency, and duration of North Atlantic hurricanes, as well as the frequency of the strongest (Category 4 and 5) hurricanes, have all increased since the early 1980s. The relative contributions of human and natural causes to these increases are still uncertain. Hurricane-associated storm intensity and rainfall rates are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.
They include the following graph, with a sharp upward rising trend, to suggest the severity of the problem.
However, like Wesson Oil, this is cherry-picked information that is misinforming - it is completely factual but not factually complete. When Koonin zooms out and reframes the same data into a longer time period, the result looks less compelling and certainly less alarming.
Is that a possible accident and not a purposeful misrepresentation of the data I asked? The NCA2014, on page 769 in Appendix 3, itself reads:
“There has been no significant trend in the global number of tropical cyclones nor has any trend been identified in the number of US land-falling hurricanes.”
The United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization (UN WMO) is pretty clear about the science of hurricanes as well,
“Any single event, such as a severe tropical cyclone [hurricane or typhoon], cannot be attributed to human-induced climate change, given the current status of scientific understanding.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR5 is slightly less clear but scientifically says the same thing,
“Confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low.”
It certainly doesn’t appear to be accidental; rather it appears quite purposeful.
The Other Issues
While it is not unreasonable to think that warming might lead to some kind of change in hurricane activity at some point, Koonin argues there is not any evidence that this is happening. Koonin goes on to cast serious doubt upon the rest of the foundational assumptions (increasing carbon dioxide will enhance the warming effect which will, in turn, create more frequent and severe extreme weather). The
Human impact upon the climate is known.
We are experiencing and will experience more record hot days.
Extreme weather events (drought, flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, etc.) are becoming more frequent
Extreme weather events (drought, flooding, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, etc.) are becoming more severe
Sea levels are rising at alarming rates
Climate models predict past and future events with confidence
Weather-related deaths are increasing
Climate Change will cause food shortages and decrease crop yields, creating famine and increased food prices
Instead of science, Koonin argues Climate Change has become more like religion. The United Nations assessment report, speaking about the negligible economic impacts of climate change, reads:
“The total economic impacts of climate change are negative, but modest on average, and that the severe impacts on less developed countries are caused primarily by poverty.”
This particular response - indicative of the many I’m sure - actually disgusted me. When Koonin asked a prominent environmental policymaker about that statement, his response was,
“Yes, it’s unfortunate that the impacts are so small.”
Fixing The Science: The Red Team Review
“The process of science is less about collecting pieces of knowledge than it is about reducing the uncertainties in what we know.”
In light of producing evidence that directly refutes many of the claims made in various assessments, including the IPCC’s AR5, Koonin calls for a Red Team Review of the climate reports.
In such an exercise, a group of scientists (the “Red Team”) would be charged with rigorously questioning one of the assessment reports, trying to identify and evaluate its weak spots. In essence, a qualified adversarial group would be asked “What’s wrong with this argument?” And, of course, the “Blue Team” (presumably the report’s authors) would have the opportunity to rebut the Red Team’s findings. Red Team exercises are commonly used to inform high-consequence decisions such as testing national intelligence findings or validating complex engineering projects like aircraft or spacecraft; they’re also common in cybersecurity. Red Teams catch errors or gaps, identify blind spots, and often help to avoid catastrophic failures. In essence, they’re an important part of a prudent, belt-and-suspenders approach to decision-making. (Note that the use of “Red” and “Blue” is traditional in the military, where these exercises originated; it has nothing to do with US politics.) A Red Team review of a climate assessment report could bolster confidence in the assessment, as well as demonstrate the robustness (or lack thereof) of its conclusions. It would both underscore the reliability of the science that stands up to its scrutiny and highlight for non-experts uncertainties or “inconvenient” points that had been obscured or downplayed. In short, it would improve and bolster The Science with science.
If you’re at all interested in understanding the nuances of The Science and how it doesn’t actually say what we’re being told it does, this is the book for you.