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Hot or Not: Steven Koonin Questions Conventional Climate Science and Methodology
Steven Koonin is one of America’s most distinguished scientists, with decades of experience, including a stint as under secretary of science at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration. In this wide-ranging discussion, based in part on his 2021 book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, Koonin gives a more refined look at the science behind the climate issue than the media typically offers, guiding us through the evidence and its implications. As Koonin explains in this interview, he was “shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed” and that the “overwhelming evidence” of catastrophic implications of anthropogenic global warming wasn’t so overwhelming after all.
Recorded on August 15, 2023.
This was a brilliant interview. Koonin confirms the impression I got on reading parts of the First Working Group (WG1) report of the IPCC, the science part. It disagrees with just about everything climate activists say. It’s nice to see my impression confirmed by an expert.
Whenever people mention the IPCC report they are almost invariably referring to the Executive Summary. Almost nobody reads the full report; that sucker is over 600 pages long. The Executive Summary was written by the bureaucrats, not the scientists, and it shows.
Agree with Roderic that this was a great interview. (Maybe Peter Robinson should interview people for a living? Heh.) It is depressing to know that The Science is being warped by all this climate change hysteria. There is so much that could being done and instead a lot of money and time is being wasted. My guess is that pollution and the enviroment generally are worse than the 80’s because of the concentration on lowering carbon: more dead birds care of wind mills, land more scarred by solar plants, emergency use of coal because other less polluting methods are closed down, etc, etc. Sigh.