Koonin's book is divided into two parts: Part One is on "The Science" and Part Two is on "The Response." Part One is eleven chapters, the response takes up the final three chapters, plus there is an epilogue. chap 1 "What We Know About Warming," an introduction to the basic science, the climate's history, and the problem of getting quality observations given the limitations of the methods we have available to us. chap 2 about climate dynamics, warming sunlight vs cooling radiation, and introduces the human/anthropogenic contribution and the challenges of parsing the anthropogenic % from natural variability. chap 3 on CO2 chemistry and the physical reality of carbon emissions, and the poor prospects for controlling human emissions to the extent needed chap 4 on climate models, how they work, what they yield results-wise, and some of their deficiencies. Reviews dozens of models each of which yield different results, and argues that over time as models have gotten more sophisticated their projections about the future have become less certain. chap 5 the first of the chapters that deals with the very wide gap between published science and what gets reported in the media--and what gets reported in the media is what influences popular conceptions of "the science." This is where he starts distinguishing between the science (actual science) and The Science as media-formed myth. chap 6 largely about extreme weather events as case illustration, mostly about hurricanes and how the myth is hurricanes are worsening when in reality there has been no change in frequency or intensity. chap 7 similar to six, looking at rainfall, fire etc. and concluding the reality doesn't match the media's portrayal of "worsening conditions." chap 8 on sea level change, looks at the reality of change (one foot per century) but the unlikely prospects of seacoast cities going underwater. chap 9 miscellany about climate deaths, famine, and projections of economic ruin. Again, media reports do not match what is reported in official (IPCC and other) reports. 10 "Who Broke It" why climate science has been communicated so poorly to politicians and to the public. Argues the hype serves the interests of various stakeholders, governments, NGOs, media, scientists themselves, etc. chap 11. how to improve science communication and encourage things like Red Team reviews of assessment reports. Part Two on policy chap 12 what society could do, what it should do, versus what it will do. Basic politics reality check about political will. chap 13 the various "could" options: best-case scenarios toward zero-carbon futures but how unlikely any of these scenarios are to actually happen chap 14 what he calls "Plan B" options, which is mostly adaptive strategies and technologically possible but as-yet-undeveloped things like geoengineering. The conclusion/epilogue is his own recommendations on what he things society and governments should do: here he recommends a type of "no-regrets" approach toward mitigation and adaptation, as well as some additional thoughts on how to improve both science and science communications in the media.
our responses passed in the ether. pretty sure that error is Hayward's (reviewer), as far as I can tell Koonin does not make that mistake:
That's at least somewhat comforting. Putting aside that particular review....here's what I had picked up about Koonan's , which I can get into later on when I can read a bit more again. Seems his book it more critical of terminology and the politics of climate change. All I really can say is that while no one out there can say, here's the exact impact warming will have, the models have thus far been accurate in their predictions. They don't agree perfectly and there is uncertainty...but just because you don't know exactly where a hurricane will hit, doesn't mean you shouldn't prepare for it until it makes landfall. It doesn't mean boarding up your windows was a waste if it missed you and hit someone else. The earth is warming, and our climate will changed. I use the word settled because that statement passes 5 sigma which is the gold standard of science - the holy grail of when science says something is fact. Nearly everything people do and make decisions on today are far far less than that standard. The predictions - that the midwest will start changing to arid near the mountains and grasslands will push east for example - that's happening right year by year. That night time temperatures would increase while daytime highs stay relatively the same - that has been the case and not in line with how warming should happen coming out of an ice age. And this is the things that people miss when they make statements like this is natural warming - it's not. nighttime temps aren't suppose to be increasing. That's alarming and a tell tale sign of global warming and climate change. Oceans are becoming more acidic. The Jet Stream is weakening. There are changes to currents and ocean temps - all predicted by climate models not made 5 years ago but 30-40 years ago. Their predictions are coming to be fact. And while you can look at one thing and say - that's in the norm of natural variation, so many things can not be, and many of the things are in fact not in the norm. It's like if I made a model and it said Jalen Green would average 35 points next season. And he average 34. Well some would say - see it's inaccuract and uncertain, and some would say that that's in the norm for what a rookie could be. But then let's say my model predicted accurately 95% of what rookies would score next season. And it predicted the outliers too - that let's say Mobley would only average 14 while Garuba would average 30. And let's say it also accurately predicted what 90% every high school player would average in their rookier year. That's what makes a model sound. When it consistently gets the predictions right not just in one instance, but nearly all. And when it predicts things you wouldn't expect, and that happens too, then your criticism of that model had better be very tight. Saying a model is flawed because it isn't granular enough can only be demonstrated if the model's predictions don't come true. Otherwise, by definitely, it wasn't flawed because if it was, at some point, it will start spewing out garbage. Now I need to really take two aspirin. .
Koonin doesn't really deny any of that. He would though I think dispute the confident assertion that the models have been "accurate in their predictions" and point to the failures even to hindcast accurately: for example models cannot account for the warming from 1910 to 1940. And again, as the models increase in sophistication, they have yielded increasingly uncertain results. The big remaining problem is climate sensitivity to multiple influences, both human and natural.
by the way, I think you misread the review, which accurately quotes Koonin from the pages I provided the photo of . . . Koonin simply says "grid size" of 100 km (60mile), NOT 100 square km = 60 square miles. And the reviewer quotes Koonin accurately. I'll chalk that one up to your kiteboarding concussion.
I'm not sure what he is pushing back on then. I don't know much about the models failure from 1910 to 1940 but there have been many so called warming trends that people have called out and turned out to not be significant after being looked into. Do you have any data there? As for the accuracy - here's a few links that may be of interest https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/...are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/ Shows how rock solid the predictions have been now of warming. I mean rock solid. Another good article about the guys who won a Nobel Prize for how accurate their models were. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...els-got-so-accurate-they-earned-a-nobel-prize And interesting quote: I don't know if I can convince you - looking at the things you have provided so far, when I dig into them, the science doesn't hold up. And the science on the other side looks stronger and stronger. No they can't tell you what's going to happen in Alabama with 95% certainty, but we can be 99% certain that unless we start taking action and planning, climate change is going to have an immensely negative impact on humanity. At some point, i do feel like you're smart enough, curious enough, and good enough of a critical thinker to see that yourself if you want to.
I think I know the answer to this question, but what is it specifically you are trying to convince me of? serious, non-sarcastic question
Maybe it's a question or it's a realization. I do want to convince you that the climate is changing in away that will be detrimental to human civilization - beyond an economic inconvenience and that will be a crisis and challenge, even if you believe humanity will rise to the occasion, that there will still be great cost and in hindsight history will say we could have avoided the worst of it if we started acting now. That it would not have required much more than planning and investment, and some minor sacrifices that would be more inconvenience than anything significant. Even with strong data, we could not rally the world around taking a vaccine to help save millions of lives. I doubt people will be willing to do anything to prevent the damage from climate change unless they live an inch above sea level.
I guess I would say I acknowledge that there will be bad effects from climate change, but that these bad effects in turn need to be judged and evaluated (a) within the context of physical and political reality, and (b) as time goes on better understood where they land on the catastrophe--annoyance spectrum. Koonin argues that to slow the effect of CO2 today, we would need to go to zero emissions (the entire globe) yesterday just to slow warming, given the persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere over time. That's just not gonna happen. All we can do is slow our emissions, we cannot eliminate them. In the emissions chapter Koonin comments Fifteen years ago when I was in the private sector, I learned to say that the goal of stabilizing human influences on the climate was "a challenge," while in government it was talked about as "an opportunity." Now back in academia, I can more forthrightly call it what it is, "a practical impossibility." And I think that physical and political reality sets the limits on what we can and should do policy-wise. Second, Koonin himself argues that anyone engaging in catastrophe rhetoric is not engaging the science: in the interview txtony posted, for example, Koonin observes I think we do need to reduce our emissions, but I would do it on a centennial timescale. Look, this is just one more issue. And it’s not the existential threat that everybody believes it is — not everybody. If you read carefully the IPCC report that just came out in August, you don’t find the words “climate catastrophe,” “existential threat,” or “climate disaster” in it at all. You find “climate crisis “once in the report, and that refers to how the media have dumbed down the description rather than any scientific finding. So it’s not a crisis. It’s a problem to be dealt with in the most graceful way that we can. I think that pretty much sums up my views on the subject as well. I think comparing the climate issue to the vaccine issue is apples and oranges, if not apples and elephants.
It's Koonin's opinion that it won't be catastrophic or an existential threat or a disaster. Now, a lot of that comes to semantics and what you define catastrophic to be. The scientists saying that our climate is going to change in a way that will be detrimental to the lives of people is very serious. No one can predict exactly what damage will be done or how it will impact life, but we know some things that will come out of it. - Fresh water supplies will decrease dramatically (this is already happening). There is both an economic cost and human cost to this - Current bread baskets in China and the US will face increasing challenges to productivity. You can argue that technology wil resolve those challenges, but the economic cost will still be there in terms of higher food prices and note the fresh water problem above - Ocean currents are changing, such as the Gulf Stream - this is a current that is responsible for much of the climate of most of the world and that is without hyperbole. If the AMOC collapses (and it is slowing down faster than the climate models predicted which should be alarming), the consequences would indeed be catastrophic. The thing is, we have no idea when it would collapse, what that "tipping point" actually is. It could be 20 years from now, it could be 200 years from now. So yeah there is uncertainty but the consequences are immense. If the AMOC alone collapses, you can kiss the greenland ice sheets goodbye in a relatively short period of time. The climate of the globe will change dramatically. You do not want that to happen. You can't take that kind of risk with 7 billion people. it's just completely insane and irresponsible to argue, "well we don't know exactly what will happen, so why should we try to do anything now?" I just don't get that logic but maybe you can explain it to me. Yeah, I understand you can't sacrifice current life for a potential future catastrophe that we don't know when it's it coming or actually how bad it will be. Maybe we can adopt and it won't be so bad. I just to think this way. But the more I looked at the science, the more I knew how unlikely that will be. Koonin may be right in that the models can't really predict the consequences of climate change, but it is happening, and happening on the faster end. Anyone who is suggesting we ban fossil fuels in the next 10 years is also nuts. I don't think that's the goal of people who are pushing for change. The movement isn't to tell people they can't drive pickup trucks or fly to go on vacation. The idea that reducing CO2 won't stop the inevitable so we shouldn't do anything makes no sense either. We don't know the exact relationship to CO2 to climate change, but we know the more of it that's there, the faster things will happen, and time is something we need more of, not less. Acknowledge this is a dire problem. We can than move on from debating the science to debating the right policies to address the problem. We need to agree that we can't continue to dump all the CO2 without serious consequences, and while there may be uncertainty around how serious or what exactly will happen, out of control change is rarely a good thing for a human civilization that depends on predictability and constancy from nature. There are things we can do to start cutting CO2 that doesn't have to feel authoritarians or telling anyone what to do. We can build more nuclear power plants. We can invest more in high speed electric rail. We can push for technologies that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere - they are getting quite promising but badly need more funding. We can push for better milage on vehicles - simply setting the target to 65 instead of 50 for the EPA will reduce a lot of CO2 into the air. We can work to reduce traffic on roads through better public transportation and better roads! Better electric cars that people want. Even getting buildings to have white tops instead of black tops can increase the albedo and warm the planet less (while reducing air conditioning bills). All of these things can be accelerated through gov't action - this isn't authoritarianism, it's what great countries have done throughout the industrial era - invest in projects that have payoffs for their populations. All of this isn't happening to the degree it should because of people like Koonin, who are gaining from saying things like there's little we can do to stop this so we should just ignore it type arguments. We got to get past this because it's silly. All of the things I mentioned isn't going to negatively affect anyone? Does painting roads white cause some great problem for people? Wouldn't you pay an extra $1k for a car that got you 10% better mileage? If we switched to all nuclear using one standard reactor model, the electricity generated would be 10% cheaper than coal - are you saying people spending less on electricity would be bad for them??? The whole argument that we lose now if we try to take steps to prevent mass climate change is the real hysteria. It's not that a catastrophe is coming - there's plenty of evidence to say that it is. The real delusion is that trying to stop it will result in mass human suffering. Like I said, the only ones who lose from this are oil companies. That's it. We all gain. We gain because of better jobs, lower energy bills, better efficiency, and a better future. That's why I am trying to convince you, because you're too freaking smart to buy into the idea that taking action means destroying our lives today.
that's a long response and perhaps I'll respond to more of it, but I'll comment on your last statement here "the only ones who lose from this are oil companies." That is just an incorrect assertion in large part because it completely ignores the benefits of inexpensive fossil fuels for the global economy and the overall well-being of almost 8 billion humans alive today. While not particularly well-argued, Epstein's book captures the point (which is rarely made by anyone focusing on doom-and-gloom and catastrophe):
Nuclear is cheaper than coal when done right. So why would you pick coal, which is more expensive to the consumer - to the 8 billion people, as well as immensely expensive in terms of the environmental damage from mining it as well as the CO2 it releases?
I've advocated nuclear all along. It's not a question of "picking" coal (or oil or natural gas etc., all of which are fossil fuels), it's a question of recognizing the importance of ALL fossil fuels for the immediate, foreseeable future . . . until such time as there is political will to make a genuine shift to nuclear and other strategies.
But don't you see, the very side that can push through nuclear power and create that political will is the same side that is dismissing climate change as a problem because its protecting the fossil fuel industry. Without the right recognizing climate change as a problem, it can't champion nuclear. And without governmental support, it's not feasible for utilities or energy companies to build nuclear power plant because of the upfront capital costs are too high. It's the equity of a nuclear power plant, and the need to recoup it that makes it more expensive. If the gov't issued the capital cost as a loan to be paid back at 1% interest over 50 years, nuclear's price would be less than fossil fuels including gas. But it's never going to happen until the right recognizes we need to do something about climate change.
you're projecting a lot of ifs there. And I think the "the very side that can push through nuclear power" statement is really naive. You're putting this in "right versus" left terms ("Without the right recognizing climate change as a problem") . . . this just isn't a right versus left problem. This is more of a physical and empirical reality and limits problem. You could have 100% political consensus and you will still run up against the intractable limits of the problem. The US is only responsible for 13% of global emissions. We could do EVERYTHING perfectly from the alarmist perspective and it would literally be a drop in the bucket as far as addressing climate change goes. The global political reality is that CO2 is pretty much here to stay for the foreseeable future.
Koonin presentation at UC Berkeley Dept. of Nuclear Engineering on Friday, cued up at the start of the intro, Koonin starts right around 10:00 good brief summary of what he does in the book Unsettled
A few points 1- Political reality. The left isn't blocking climate change legislation or actions. See Florida as a recent example- as soon as Republicans there realize they got to do something, it got done. See the Biden Infra bill as another recent example. Good chances for nuclear power investment (or almost anything) to fight climate change will pass if there is support from the Republican leadership. The good news here is that some Republicans (and this # will grow over time) are supportive. But there isn't enough yet to do more nationally. At the state level, IL just passed a bi-partisan bill on nuclear power plants and climate change. At the federal level, there are about ~7 Republican onboard (last I count a year ago). Here was one small bipartisan proposal that made it (as part of the infrastructure bill). Summary of nuclear energy provisions in the infrastructure bill here. The larger nuclear proposal in the BBB died. 2- 'what about everyone else' is not so different than 'what about Trump'. EVEN if everyone else does nothing (which isn't reality), there are good reasons for acting - see #3. 3- There are many other benefits to moving away from fossil fuels and dealing with climate change at home. In no particular order. Cleaner air, the sun is an unlimited energy source, no war because of fossil fuel, we can stop supporting oil-producing but bad human rights states, energy independent from foreign states, energy independent from the oil cartel, economy that is NOT dependent on energy (once clean energy infrastructure are in place and stable which will happen), stable energy price (instead of the sawtooth prices we have been going through), US local and federal adaptation for climate change (which are already happening in a state like FL), future economy, staying ahead of China curve toward tomorrow energy, technology, and economy, ....
The left is behind climate change is real and taking action, but can't stomach supporting nuclear. The right doesn't want to believe in climate change because they fear it means bans on oils and they will be forced to do things, and because the oil industry spends huge amounts of money to create skepticism around it. It is a political problem, you've stated as much. China is the biggest producer of CO2 emissions by far - you are right, but they are also planning to build 150 nuclear power plants in 15 years. The US is the 2nd biggest producer, and this is a huge missed opportunity to have a US company become the Boeing of nuclear power for not just the US but for a big chunk of the world. As I have said also, there are so many other things we can do to fight climate change without making anyone "suffer", but instead we are debating the merits of a former BP executive who has always towed the interests of oil companies and pushed for alternative solutions that would not end up in the reduction of oil usage. That's been his career for nearly 20 years, and now we are to take Koonan as unbiased??? Every country has to do their part, China, India, the US, the EU, etc. The sad part is, the US is lagging behind everyone else when it should be leading the charge. We're setting ourselves to be a backwards country where new technology comes from other places all to serve the interests of an industry that feels threatened.
then the left is 100% not serious about addressing carbon emissions and climate change. it's as simple as that I'll nibble. "The sad part is, the US is lagging behind everyone else when it should be leading the charge." by what metrics and/or in what categories is the U.S. "lagging behind everyone else"?
and actually, if Koonin and others are correct that it would be a mistake to over-invest now in questionable technologies with questionable future benefits, perhaps there is a good argument in favor of the United States "lagging behind" at this time. It's at least a possibility, no?
