Facing Up to Climate Change independentnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from independentnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Physicist Steven Koonin, a former BP chief scientist and Obama administration energy official, seeks to downplay climate change risk in his new book, “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t and Why it Matters.”
His critics say he often draws general conclusions from specific slices of data or uncertainties (sometimes signaled by key words or phrases.) As a result, they say, his statements are frequently misleading, and often leave the reader with the incorrect impression climate scientists are hiding the truth.
“Identifying, quantifying, and reducing uncertainties in models and observations is an integral part of climate science,” said atmospheric scientist Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “The climate science community discusses uncertainties in an open and transparent way, and has done so for decades. It is simply untrue that Prof. Koonin is confronting climate scientists with unpleasant facts they h
A New Book Feeds Climate Doubters, but Scientists Say the Conclusions are Misleading and Out of Date
Steven Koonin, who during Trump’s presidency proposed having a “red team, blue team” climate debate, argues that climate action’s “certain downsides” outweigh the “uncertain” benefits.
May 4, 2021
Steven Koonin, then-under secretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy, speaks at the 2011 CERAWEEK conference in Houston, Texas, U.S., on Friday, March 11, 2011. Credit: Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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The most ardent foes of climate policy in the Trump administration dreamed of staging a grand climate science debate. They called it a “red team/blue team” exercise, a term borrowed from military strategy games, and it was designed to test the proposition that fossil fuel pollution put the planet at risk.
Benjamin Santer - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists thebulletin.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thebulletin.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
2019 capped off the world s hottest decade in recorded history
It also marked the second-warmest year ever. What happens in the future is really up to us, said one scientist.
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Washington Post | ×
Graphic: The Washington Post
WASHINGTON The past decade was the hottest ever recorded on the planet, driven by an acceleration of temperature increases in the past five years, according to new data released Wednesday by the U.S. government.
The findings, released jointly by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), detail a troubling trajectory: 2019 was the second-hottest year on record, trailing only 2016. The past five years each rank among the five hottest since record-keeping began. And 19 of the hottest 20 years have occurred during the past two decades.