Unsettled – Book Review by Michael J. Murray
A Master Teacher Explains Climate Science
A while ago, I read a WSJ Op Ed article Steven Koonin about our changing climate. The clarity of his prose, the objective tone, and the forthrightness of his convictions impressed me. Dr. Koonin, after having attended recent international conferences on climate change, expressed concern that many of the participants lacked a deep understanding of their subject. They were regarding as “settled” certain climate projections that still needed to undergo the rigorous checks and balances of the scientific method. Only a scientist of substantial intellectual clout would venture such a bold statement.
Koonin’s credentials as a climatologist are impeccable – BS in physics from Cal Tech, PhD in theoretical physics from MIT, award-winning classroom teacher, five years as chief scientist for British Petroleum, researching renewable energy options, Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy under President Obama. This experience in the three spheres that most influence climate science – the scientific, the business, and the political - affords him a unique perspective from which to judge the large and intricate picture. He is certainly not a climate denier and understands the effect of humans on greenhouse gases.
I bought a copy of “Unsettled” as a concerned citizen, eager to learn more about a controversial subject that looms large in current world affairs. Reading its 255 pages of text, I learned much about the scope and depth of climate research with its complexity of variables, especially those used to construct models projecting world climate 50 or 100 years from now, a subject that has fueled much heated debate.
The organization of “Unsettled” facilitates understanding. Its Table of Contents and Introduction set a clear path. It contains 24 pages of thorough notes, and its Index conveniently allows for backchecking and cross referencing if the reader so chooses.
“Unsettled” has two parts. The first deals with the science of changing climate; the second with responses “society might make to those changes.” Part I contains specific chapters about our current knowledge of climate study, human influences on greenhouse gases, emissions, climate models, hurricanes, precipitation and fires, and sea levels.
Koonin doesn’t lecture about climate science. Rather, he guides the reader, chapter by chapter, through each strand of the science, attentive always to the larger picture. And his use of graphs to do this is brilliant. The 85 graphs in “Unsettled,” far from being scholarly decorations, serve as illuminative teaching instruments in the spirit of one picture being worth 1,000 words, and in conjunction with the author’s astute commentary provide the reader with a good sense of the challenges posed by this highly complex field of study.
Several graphs come from the reports of prestigious world climate organizations such as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) with its consequential ARs (Assessment Reports), and the CMIP (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) reports. This affords the reader a glimpse at some of the actual data discussed at high-level international conferences
“Unsettled” also presents a cogent argument in favor of the scientific method. Dr. Koonin, his tone always civil and dispassionate, draws a contrast between “The Science” and science. “The Science” refers to the fashionable narrative that predictions of climate doom are settled matters because “The Science” says they are. True science, of course, is never settled, or is so merely in an ephemeral way. The method of science is to probe and test ideas and theories, objectively scrutinizing the data, trying to replicate experiments, testing for flaws. It applies whether a theory has existed for three years or three centuries. It is the most effective tool we have for ascertaining the validity of a scientific theory.
Throughout “Unsettled” Koonin maintains that science ought to inform, not persuade. Science is not advertising. To illustrate, he refers to a commencement speech at Cal Tech in 1974, given by his former teacher and colleague, the legendary physicist Richard Feynman. Feynman exhorted the graduates “to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contributions; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.”
Feynman referred to a TV ad for cooking oil that claimed its oil “doesn’t soak through food.” While that statement is not untrue, Feynman said, it lacks scientific integrity because no oil soaks through food, or all oils do, depending on the temperature. Koonin’s book contains a number of examples of such specious presentations in climate science reporting that present the part for the whole and that lack scientific integrity not by lying but rather the sin of omission.
Dr. Koonin, who has been tracking the misrepresentation of climate science by politicians and the media since 2017, recommends a Red Team exercise for examining climate Assessment Reports. The Red Team, a group of qualified scientists, would scrutinize one of the Assessment Reports trying to find “What’s wrong with this argument?” A Blue Team, the Report’s authors, could then rebut the Red findings. He advocates such safeguards because the “processes for drafting and reviewing the climate science assessment reports do not promote objectivity.”
I am not a scientist. I taught high school English with some stints in college for 45 years and appreciate good teaching. Reading “Unsettled” was like taking a course by a master teacher, who could break down a complex subject into a series of simple steps and rebuild it again to this reader’s delight.
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Better subtitle: How I learned to stop worrying and love the internal combustion engine.
In Settled Dr. Koonin examines the same data that rallies and riles climate activists. He derives plausible alternative explanations that cast reasonable doubt on the existential threat of fossil fuel burning.I would have given Unsettled five stars if he would have addressed the attached data. The far right part of the chart displays modern data collected by instruments also know as the infamous 'hockey stick.' That data is married to 400,000 years of ice core data. What is immediately apparent is the periodicity of CO2-temperature spikes. We seem to be living, coincidentally, during the most recent spike. It is also interesting to note that although modern CO2 levels are rising temperature has leveled off and seems to be decreasing. How can that be if CO2 is driving temperature?Looking closely at the cooling periods, CO2 lags temperature, it does not lead temperature. Could it be that temperature drives CO2 levels not the other way around? A deep investigation into this question would have allowed me to give a five star rating.I forgot to mention: The fundamental question that no one asks is what would be the expected temperature rise (from the 1800s) if there were no humans and no fossil fuel burning? Answer: 2C-3C. That is based on the tree ring data in the attached chart. Since we are now at 1C, we have at least 2C of warming before we can, unequivocally, state that humans are responsible for global warming.
Top reviews from other countries
Ramon
Una verdad que incomoda a la mayoría de la población.
Reviewed in Mexico on August 16, 2022
Ramon
Reviewed in Mexico on August 16, 2022
Sin duda un libro que abre los ojos en cuanto este tema. Muy recomendado!
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