Climate Science Is ‘Unsettled,’ Says Obama Science Director’s New Book

Review of Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, by Steven E. Koonin (BenBella Books), May 4, 2021, 240 pages, ISBN-10: 1950665798, ISBN-13: 978-1950665792; $8.49 (Kindle), $22.46 (Hard Cover) on Amazon

Of the multiple books and documentaries poking holes in the apocalyptic climate alarm narrative released in the past year, Unsettled may be the most critical of all, because of who its author is.

Climate Insider Unsettles Debate

Koonin was involved in the development of the early computer models used in science and wrote one of the first books describing how computer models were developed, how they function, and their strengths and limits when used in science. The book is still widely used in college classrooms today. Koonin’s more than 200 academic papers and articles have been cited more than 14,000 times, according to Google Scholar.

Koonin’s research and writings on climate science and energy led former President Barack Obama to appoint him Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy. Koonin’s portfolio included the government’s climate research program.

Koonin is the ultimate climate insider. Climate hypers cannot plausibly portray him as fringe scientist working outside the mainstream or legitimately label him a “climate denier.”

Koonin’s research indicates the climate is changing and humans have influenced some of that change. Almost everything else people have been led to believe about climate change is unsettled, reports Koonin.

‘The Science’

The author begins by describing what he refers to as “The Science”—you know, the thing everyone is supposed to be following:

“‘The Science,’ we’re told, is settled. How many times have you heard it?

“Humans have already broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed. [Emphasis in original.]

“Well . . . not quite. Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that—to paraphrase the classic movie The Princess Bride: ‘I do not think “The Science” says what you think it says.’”

Muddled Models

Unsettled begins with a discussion of what we know about how the climate works (hint: it’s less than you’ve been led to believe), and the extent to which humans are contributing to climate change (also less than you might think). Koonin then proceeds to discuss how climate models have developed and the ways in which their results are “muddled,” in Koonin’s words, instead of being definitive and trustworthy. Koonin shows models often contradict one another and fail to match observed changes in temperature and climate.

This chapter also begins the book’s examination of how various interested parties suppress and misrepresent good climate research in order to persuade the public we face a climate crisis. This latter point is a running theme Koonin highlights by citing specific examples throughout the book.

‘Apocalypses That Ain’t’

Chapters Five through Nine examine various negative effects purportedly being caused or exacerbated by human-caused climate change. This set of chapters is fairly summed up by the title of Chapter Nine: “Apocalypses That Ain’t.” Among the findings Koonin discloses are:

• The late[st] generation of models is actually more uncertain than the earlier one[s].
• Heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900 and 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.
• The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.

Unsettled then examines who “broke” climate science, and how and why they did so, in the process detailing the ways by which the scientific enterprise and wise policy decision making are being perverted.

Science Perverted to Persuade

Science is a process, a method of discovering truth. As Koonin’s book shows, many of those involved in climate research and reporting have abandoned science—the process of discovering data and evidence and assembling facts—for “The Science,” a massive effort to persuade people to believe something that is not true, for normative or political reasons.

Koonin’s suggestion that the federal government institute a “Red Team/Blue Team” exercise to examine and discuss weaknesses in various government climate reports before they are published was met with hostility by many politically connected scientists and powerful government leaders.

Prominent Democrat senators have pushed legislation 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.”

You read that right. Politicians who regularly demand people “follow the science” on climate change have tried to ban the use of the scientific method to discover what climate science tells us.

Later in the book, Koonin explores why political diktats to curtail fossil fuel use sharply are likely to produce outcomes as bad as or worse than the harms they are meant to prevent. Koonin counsels flexible adaptation as the response to climate change most likely to mitigate any harms while generating beneficial outcomes.

Koonin definitively shows that much more is unsettled than is settled in the climate debate.

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. (hsburnett@heartland.org) is the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.