His track record on getting climate science right is extremely poor.
By Naomi Oreskes, Michael E. Mann, Gernot Wagner, Don Wuebbles, Andrew Dessler, Andrea Dutton, Geoffrey Supran, Matthew Huber, Thomas Lovejoy, Ilissa Ocko, Peter C. Frumhoff, Joel Clement
If you’d heard only that a scientist who served in the Trump administration and now regularly appears on Fox News and other conservative media thinks climate change is a hoax, you’d roll your eyes and move on. But if you heard that someone associated with former President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration was calling the climate science consensus a conspiracy, the novelty of the messenger might make you take it a little more seriously.
The latter is what Steve Koonin is using to sell his new book, which is being billed as the revelation of an “Obama scientist” who wants you to think that climate change isn’t a big deal. But unfortunately, climate change is real, is caused primarily by burning fossil fuels, and is already hurting people all over the world, including here in the United States.
For example, a study published recently found that because climate change has caused sea levels to rise, Superstorm Sandy flooded an additional 36,000 homes, impacting 71,000 people who would’ve been safe otherwise, and caused $8 billion in additional damage.
How many people are suffering, and paying in health care costs because of fossil fuels isn’t the kind of thing Steve Koonin thinks you should worry about, though. That’s because his argument in 2021 is as scientifically empty as it was in 2013, when the American Physical Society allowed him to lead a review of their climate consensus statement. He assembled a team of his own to challenge mainstream scientists, and in January of 2014 held a debate for the scientific society. You can even read the 573-page transcript of the full-day debate. (Spoiler alert: the APS was not swayed by denial.) But instead of accepting that his idiosyncratic view of climate science was considered wrong by climate scientists, Koonin resigned from the process. He evidently doesn’t need to win a debate, he just needs to make it seem like there is one.
Continue reading at scientificamerican.com.
Oreskes, Naomi, Michael E. Mann, Gernot Wagner, Don Wuebbles, Andrew Dessler, Andrea Dutton, Geoffrey Supran, Matthew Huber, Thomas Lovejoy, Ilissa Ocko, Peter C. Frumhoff & Joel Clement. “That ‘Obama Scientist’ Climate Skeptic You’ve Been Hearing About…” Scientific American, 1 June 2021.