THIS POST IS A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ARTICLE ON STEVE KOONIN’S NEW BOOK “UNSETTLED”. LINK TO THE SCIENTIC AMERICAN ARTICLE: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-book-manages-to-get-climate-science-badly-wrong/

STEVE KOONIN HAS ALSO WRITTEN A RESPONSE TO SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN:

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/06/04/in-his-own-words/

PART-1: WHAT THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ARTICLE SAYS

A New Book Manages to Get Climate Science Badly Wrong
In Unsettled, Steven Koonin deploys that highly misleading label to falsely suggest that we don’t understand the risks well enough to take action.

By Gary Yohe May 13, 2021. Gary W. Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University

PART-1: FULL TEXT OF THE GARY YOHE ARTICLE AS FOUND IN SCIAM
Steven Koonin, a former undersecretary for science of the Department of Energy in the Obama administration, but more recently considered for an advisory post to Scott Pruitt when he was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has published a new book. Released on May 4 and entitled Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, its major theme is that the science about the Earth’s climate is anything but settled. He argues that pundits and politicians and most of the population who feel otherwise are victims of what he has publicly called “consensus science.” Koonin is wrong on both counts. The science is stronger than ever around findings that speak to the likelihood and consequences of climate impacts, and has been growing stronger for decades. In the early days of research, the uncertainty was wide; but with each subsequent step that uncertainty has narrowed or become better understood. This is how science works, and in the case of climate, the early indications detected and attributed in the 1980s and 1990s, have come true, over and over again and sooner than anticipated. This is not to say that uncertainty is being eliminated, but decision makers have become more comfortable dealing with the inevitable residuals. They are using the best and most honest science to inform prospective investments in abatement (reducing greenhouse gas emissions to diminish the estimated likelihoods of dangerous climate change impacts) and adaptation (reducing vulnerabilities to diminish their current and projected consequences). Koonin’s intervention into the debate about what to do about climate risks seems to be designed to subvert this progress in all respects by making distracting, irrelevant, misguided, misleading and unqualified statements about supposed uncertainties that he thinks scientists have buried under the rug. Here, I consider a few early statements in his own words. They are taken verbatim from his introductory pages so he must want the reader to see them as relevant take-home findings from the entire book. They are evaluated briefly in their proper context, supported by findings documented in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is important to note that Koonin recognizes this source in his discussion of assessments, and even covers the foundations of the confidence and likelihood language embedded in its findings (specific references from the IPCC report are presented in brackets). Two such statements by Koonin followed the simple preamble “For example, both the literature and government reports that summarize and assess the state of climate science say clearly that…”: “Heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years.” (Italics in the original.) This is a questionable statement depending on the definition of “heat wave”, and so it is really uninformative. Heat waves are poor indicators of heat stress. Whether or not they are becoming more frequent, they have clearly become hotter and longer over the past few decades while populations have grown more vulnerable in large measure because they are, on average, older [Section 19.6.2.1]. Moreover, during these longer extreme heat events, it is nighttime temperatures that are increasing most. As a result, people never get relief from insufferable heat and more of them are at risk of dying. “The warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years.” According to what measure? Highest annual global averages? Absolutely not. That the planet is has warmed since the industrial revolution is unequivocal with more than 30 percent of that warming having occurred over the last 25 years, and the hottest annual temperatures in that history have followed suit [Section SPM.1]. Here are a few more statements from Koonin’s first two pages under the introduction that “Here are three more that might surprise you, drawn from recently published research or the latest assessments of climate science published by the US government and the UN”: “Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago.” For a risk-based approach to climate discussions about what we “should do,” this statement is irrelevant. It is the future that worries us. Observations from 11 satellite missions monitoring the Arctic and Antarctic show that ice sheets are losing mass six times faster than they were in the 1990s. Is this the beginning of a new trend? Perhaps. The settled state of the science for those who have adopted a risk management approach is that this is a high-risk possibility (huge consequences) that should be taken seriously and examined more completely. This is even more important because, even without those contributions to the historical trend that is accelerating, rising sea levels will continue to exaggerate coastal exposure by dramatically shrinking the return times of all variety of storms [Section 19.6.2.1]; that is, 1-in-100 year storms become 1-in-50 year events, and 1-in-50 year storms become 1-in-10 year events and eventually nearly annual facts of life. “The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.” It is unconscionable to make a statement like this, and not just because the adjective “minimal” is not at all informative. It is unsupportable without qualification because aggregate estimates are so woefully incomplete [Section 19.6.3.5]. Nonetheless, Swiss Re recently released a big report on climate change saying that insurance companies are underinsuring against rising climate risks that are rising now and projected to continue to do so over the near term. Despite the uncertainty, they see an imminent source of risk, and are not waiting until projections of the end of the century clear up to respond. The first of these misdirection statements about Greenland is even more troubling because the rise in global mean sea level has accelerated. This is widely known despite claims to the contrary in Chapter 8 which is described in the introduction as a “levelheaded look at sea levels, which have been rising over the past many millennia.” Koonin continues: “We’ll untangle what we really know about human influences on the current rate of rise (about one foot per century) and explain why it’s very hard to believe that surging seas will drown the coasts any time soon.” The trouble is that while seas have risen eight to nine inches since 1880, more than 30 percent of that increase has occurred during the last two decades: 30 percent of the historical record over the past 14 percent of the time series. This is why rising sea levels are expected with very high confidence to exaggerate coastal exposure and economic consequences [Section 19.6.2.1]. His teaser for Chapter 7 is an equally troubling misdirection. He promises to highlight “some points likely to surprise anyone who follows the news—for instance, that the global area burned by fires each year has declined by 25 percent since observations began in 1998.” Global statistics are meaningless in this context. Wildfires (if that is what he is talking about) are local events whose regional patterns of intensity and frequency fit well into risk-based calibrations because they are increasing in many locations. Take, for example, the 2020 experience. Record wildfires were seen across the western United States, Siberia, Indonesia and Australia (extending from 2019) to name a few major locations. Take a more specific example. From August through October of 2020, California suffered through what became the largest wildfire in California history. It was accompanied by the third, fourth, fifth and sixth largest conflagrations in the state’s history; and all five of them were still burning on October 3. Their incredible intensity and coincidence can only be explained by the confluence of four climate change consequences that have been attributed to climate changes so far: record numbers of nighttime dry lightning strikes during a long and record-setting drought, a record-setting heat wave extending from July through August, a decade of bark-beetle infestation that killed 85 percent of the trees across enormous tracks of forests, and long-term warming that has extended the fire season by 75 days. So, what is the takeaway message? Regardless of what Koonin has written in his new book, the science is clear, and the consensus is incredibly wide. Scientists are generating and reporting data with more and more specificity about climate impacts and surrounding uncertainties all the time. This is particularly true with regard to the exaggerated natural, social and economic risks associated with climate extremes—the low-probability, high-consequence events that are such a vital part of effective risk management. This is not an unsettled state of affairs. It is living inside a moving picture of what is happening portrayed with sharper clarity and more detail with every new peer-reviewed paper.

PART-2: CRITICAL COMMENTARY

WHAT GARY SAYS: The science is stronger than ever around findings that speak to the likelihood and consequences of climate impacts, and has been growing stronger for decades. In the early days of research, the uncertainty was wide; but with each subsequent step that uncertainty has narrowed or become better understood. This is how science works, and in the case of climate, the early indications detected and attributed in the 1980s and 1990s, have come true, over and over again and sooner than anticipated.

RESPONSE TO GARY: With respect to the the likelihood and consequences of climate impacts, a very significant such likelyhood was the repeated and failed forecasts about September minimum sea ice extent of the Arctic in the expectation of an Ice Free Arctic as described in these related post.

LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/01/15/icefreearcticinsanity/

LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/01/arctic-sea-ice-its-all-quite-devastating/

LINK#3: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/18/the-ice-free-arctic-obsession-of-agw/

THE COMICAL NATURE OF THESE FORECASTS DERIVES FROM THE FAILURE TO TAKE THE GEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE ARCTIC INTO ACCOUNT

LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/12/08/the-arctic-ocean-warms-from-below/

LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/02/27/geological-features-of-the-arctic/

Yet another failed ice obsession of climate science is the expectation of the imminent collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and its catastrophic sea level rise of several meters that has been an ongoing feature of this science since the Hansen testimony of 1988. This fearful forecast is derived from what had happened in the previous interglacial, the Eemian where the initial warming after deglaciation had raised temperature to 5C warmer than today. This strong and sudden warming trend of the Eemian had cause te West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) to collapse and raise sea levels by several meters. The hightened expectation that a similar event in the Holocene would seal the deal as it were on the need to fear climate change and to take climate action has kept climate sciience with an obsession for a similar event in the Holocene to the point that every ice melt event there or an evanescent high temperature event served as the trigger to send climate scientists into a hysterical expectation of the Eemian event in the complete absence of the climate conditions of the Eemian that had caused the collapse of the WAIS. This obsessiive interest of climate scientists in the WAIS was fed by the geological features of the WAIS the whole of which sits on the West Antarctic Rift System home to acive faults, a large number of active volcanoes both land and submarine, and the Marie Byrd mantle plume hot spot. The Pine Island glacier and the Thwaites glacier that have been closely watched and studied by climate scientists with every ice melt event there interpreted as climate change events, are located in the Marie Byrd Mantle Plume region and sit above active volcanoes. Ice melt events in this region and under these conditions cannot be understood as atmospheric phenomena as described in the documents linked below.

THE EEMIAN INTERGLACIAL: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/12/21/eemian/

ANTARCTICA LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/04/04/pine-island-glacier-tipping-point/

ANTARCTICA LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/16/is-climate-change-melting-glaciers-in-antarctica/

ANTARCTICA LINK#3: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/09/18/the-climate-science-obsession-with-the-thwaites-glacier/

ANTARCTICA LINK#4: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/09/17/glaciers-tearing-loose-climate-change/

ANTARCTICA LINK#5: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/09/west-antarctic-glaciers-doomed/

IN THE LAST LINK WE PROVIDE EVIDENCE AND LITERATURE CITATIONS TO POINT OUT FLAWS IN THE THE DESPERATE ATTEMPT BY CLIMATE SCIENCE TO ATTRIBUTE ALL POLAR ICE MELT EVENTS TO GLOBAL WARMING

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/11/07/climate-change-threatens-polar-ice/

AS FOR THE CREDIBILITY AND REIABILITY OF CLIMATE SCIENTISTS SINCE 1980, WE PRESENT A HISTORY OF CLAIMS AND FORECASTS THAT EXPOSE A COMICAL NATURE OF THIS FAILED EXRECISE THAT IS SURELY MORE FEAR MONGERING THAN SCIENCE

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/04/13/the-science-of-climate-science-is-fear/

FURTHER EVIDENCE OF THE CORRUPTION OF CLIMATE SCIENCE BY ACTIVISM IS FOUND IN STATISTICAL ERRORS AS FOR EXAMPLE THE INTEPRETATION OF UNCERTAINTY IN TERMS OF EXTREME VALUES

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/22/climate-science-uncertainty/

IN HYPOTHESIS TESTS, THAT WHICH IS TO BE PROVEN MUST BE THE ALTERNATE HYPOTHESIS. ITS NEGATION MUST BE THE NULL HYPOTHESIS AND SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE MUST BE PROVIDED TO REJECT THE NULL ACCEPT THE ALTERNATE HYPOTHESIS BUT CLIMATE SCIENCE CONTAINS A BIAS FOR THAT WHICH THE SCIENTISTS WANT TO PROVE BY MAKING THAT THE NULL HYPOTHESIS THAT STANDS AS TRUTH UNTIL SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE IS PROVIDED AGAINST IT. ANOTHER SOURCE OF BIAS IN CLIMATE SCIENCE IS THE VIOLATION OF THE CIRCULAR REASONING VIOLATION OF THE RULE THAT A HYPOTHESIS DERIVED FROM THE DATA CANNOT BE TESTED WITH THE SAME DATA. THIS KIND OF STATISTICS INTRODUCES A BIAS IN CLIMATE SCIENCE. THESE STATISTICS ISSUES ARE DESCRIBED IN RELATED POSTS ON THIS SITE.

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/04/05/the-null-hypothesis-issue/

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/22/climate-science-uncertainty/

THESE AND OTHER STATISTICS ISSUES IN CLIMATE SCIENCE ARE DESCRIBED IN THIS RELATED POST:

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/18/climate-science-vs-statistics/

READERS OF GARY’S ARTICLE IN SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SHOULD TAKE THIS DARK SIDE OF CLIMATE SCIENCE SERIOUSLY AND GARY HIMSELF SHOULD PROVIDE AN EXPLANATION OF THIS SORDID HISTORY FOR A SCIENCE HE CLAIMS IS INDEED A SCIENCE AND CREDIBLE BECAUSE WHAT WE SEE IN THE LINKS ABOVE IS A KIND OF OF ACTIVISM PRETENTING TO BE SCIENCE OR AT BEST A KIND OF SCIENCE CORRUPTED BY ACTIVISM.

IN THE WORDS OF CLIMATE SCIENTIST JAMES HANSEN:

Scientific reticence hinders communication with the public about the dangers of global warming. It is important that policy-makers recognize the potential influence of this phenomenon. Scientific reticence may be a consequence of the scientific method. Success in science depends on objective skepticism. Scientific reticence has its merits. However, in a case such as ice sheet instability and sea level rise, there is a danger of excessive reticence. [LINK TO SOURCE DOCUMENT]

TRANSLATION: ADHERENCE TO UNBIASED OBJECTIVE SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY INTERFERES WITH CLIMATE ACTIVISM. THE WORD RETICENCE IN THIS CONTEXT IS BEST UNDERSTOOD AS “INSISTENCE ON FOLLOWING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WHEN WHAT WE FACE IS THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET”.

AND FINALLY, AN UN ANSWERED QUESTION FROM MICHAEL WAYNE BOX ON QUORA:

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/19/a-quora-question-5-19-2021/

A QUORA QUESTION 5/19/2021

Posted by: chaamjamal on: May 19, 2021

• In: Uncategorized
• 5 Comments

A QUESTION FROM MICHAEL WAYNE BOX SAYS;

I AM LOOKING FOR CLIMATOLOGY FORECASTS THAT ARE MORE THAN 10 YEARS OLD AND THAT MADE A PROJECTION THAT HAS SINCE COME TO PASS. I AM LOOKING FOR A MEASURABLE FORECAST THAT HAS BEEN FOUND TO BE MEASURABLY TRUE.

ANSWER:

MAY 20: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 21: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 22: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 23: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 24: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 25: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 26: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 27: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 28: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 29: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 30: NO ANSWER YET

MAY 31: NO ANSWER YET

JUNE 1: NO ANSWER YET

JUNE 2: NO ANSWER YET

JUNE 3: NO ANSWER YET