228. Steven Koonin on what climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters, based on his book Unsettled

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2021

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

According to Steven Koonin, when it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that “the science is settled.” Koonin avers that the long game of telephone from research to reports, to the popular media, is corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation. Koonin says that core questions about the way the climate is responding to our influence, and what the impacts will be remain largely unanswered. Koonin acknowledges that the climate is changing, and he claims the whyand how aren’t as clear as you’ve probably been led to believe, and what the impacts will be remain largely unanswered.

In this engaging conversation Michael Shermer challenges Dr. Koonin with many of the most common critiques of his book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, and Steven Koonin responds by drawing upon his decades of experience — including as a top science advisor to the Obama administration.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to theurmer Show.
0:16.4	Welcome to the Michael Schurmer Show. I'm your host Michael Schurmer.
0:17.7	My guest today is Stephen Kuhnen.
0:21.3	His new book is called Unsettled,
0:23.9	what climate science tells us, what it doesn't,
0:26.6	and why it matters.
0:28.8	I knew Stephen when he was the provost at Caltech
0:31.1	when we had our Caltech science lecture series to the Skeptics and and I know of his work as a theoretical physicist and so on.
0:40.0	This book I was a little apprehensive about having him on because I've already had Yorn Lumborg and Michael Schallenberg on and you got some flack for that even though they're not really climate deniers in the traditional sense and neither is Stephen.
0:55.2	So we get into that.
0:56.1	We go through the big five questions as I always phrase this whole subject, is the Earth
1:01.9	getting warmer, this human activity primary driver of the warming.
1:06.2	How much warmer is it going to get? What are the effects of the warming and what we should do about it?
1:10.0	So he agrees. The Earth is definitely getting warmer and human activity is really probably the
1:14.0	primary driver of that although he points out the natural cycles of
1:19.3	of heating and cooling and storms and droughts and so on but still nevertheless there's and
1:24.0	the storms and droughts and so on, but still nevertheless there is some effect going on there, but what he focuses on in the book and in our conversation
1:29.0	is the levels of uncertainty in the IPCC reports themselves and other government agencies and
1:35.6	he's been part of all that. I give him a proper introduction here for his bio.
1:40.4	He's a leader in science policy in the United States. He served as the
1:44.4	Under Secretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy under President
1:47.9	Obama, Trump, where he was lead author of the Department Strategic strategic plan in the inaugural Quadrenial Technology Review with more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in the field of physics and astrophysics
	...

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