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Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Ben and Steve
Ben Santer does not want Steve Koonin to speak at LLNL
Scientific research is not proven in the theater of public opinion. I disagree with many comments here that say Professor Koonan's work should be presented in an open meeting and then debated among LLNL scientists in an open forum. The reasoning here is that Professor Koonan wrote a book with his scientific views that was not peer reviewed. Why not invite Sean Hannity to LLNL and have him debate Ben Santer on Climate Science? Why, because it would make a farce out of rock solid peer reviewed research.
Sorry Lisa. A lot of scientific discussions take place without peer review. It would be a strange world if you needed a Physical Review Letter before you could talk about a subject. Universities and the labs have seminars where results are discussed without the requirement of pre publication. Also, you forget that Koonin is a scientist (theoretical physics, MIT). The comparison to a Fox News celebrity isn’t appropriate,
"Sean Hannity to LLNL and have him debate Ben Santer on Climate Science? Why, because it would make a farce out of rock solid peer reviewed research."
Sean Hannity does not have a Phd in physics or is an expert computational physics. Prof. Koonan does.
Also this is not a theater of public opinion it is a scientific seminar with questions and answers. Seminars, talks, debates and colloquiums are not theater but essential to the scientific endeavor. Perhaps you are not familiar with how scientific discourse is done but LLNL has seminars every day, to call them theater is ridicules.
I think Prof. Koonin should speak. The argument I am hearing is that since Prof. Koonin is not a climate scientist, he has no expertise in the area. He does, however, have expertise in the scientific method, scientific computing, examination of data, the limits determining what models can and cannot tell you, and mathematics; thus he is entirely qualified to say something about the climate modeling and climate science approaches.
If in fact Prof. Koonin is so incredibly ill-informed about climate science, then during the talk itself or during a follow-up seminar, Ben Santer should easily be able to refute what Prof. Koonin has said, or at least give an argument as to why Prof. Koonin's case has some flaws or is not certain.
The idea that one has to be working directly in a specific scientific field in order to say something relevant or valid about it is nonsense. One either has intelligent points or not; what is of importance is the argument the person makes, not who the person is. Part of the process of science is debate, which includes hearing different arguments for and against an idea or theory, examination of the evidence, and proposing alternative explanations. If a scientific theory is correct, it will be able to withstand such counterarguments. In fact, if Santer is so confident in his viewpoint, the talk by Prof. Koonin could be seen as an opportunity to sway people who have doubts. Such people will be able to hear the talk and listen to the points raised by Prof. Koonin, and then hear a reply by Santer. If Santer can adequately refute the points that Dr. Koonin makes, many people with doubts will become more confident in the climate science.
I find it disturbing that Santer would want to shut down scientific debate on these topics and also find it in conflict with how science is done. Climate science by its very nature deals with extremely complex systems containing many variables, so high degrees of certainty about anything in this field is difficult to achieve. I agree that reasonable bounds and probabilities can be established, but one has to be honest about just how certain any of this work actually is. One only has to look at pandemic and economics forecasting to get an idea of how tricky predicting the behavior of complex systems can be. Many scientists have doubts about how accurate long term climate modeling actually is and how well controlled the parameters are. Shutting down other scientific voices on this issue is not going to help with those doubts. I would also argue that not allowing Prof. Koonin to speak will discourage the best climate scientists from coming to LLNL or any NNSA lab since it would show that the NNSA labs are not abiding by the accepted procedures for scientific dialogue. Ultimately I think Ben Santer is hurting his scientific field and hurting LLNL. I would propose that instead of trying to cancel Prof. Koonin's talk, LLNL should allow the talk to be given and then also arrange for Santer or others from that group to give a talk representing their viewpoint. I find the idea of employing the so-called cancel culture techniques in scientific fields to be toxic and completely counter to the scientific method.
Charles Reichhardt Fellow of the American Physical Society Theoretical Division Los Alamos National Laboratory
Ben Santer, one of the world’s best-known climate scientists, announced this week he is severing ties with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after the federal research facility invited a climate denier to give a book talk this Thursday.
Santer had planned to retire from the lab, where he has worked for 29 years, in September, but would continue his award-winning atmospheric research on a part-time basis and maintain his affiliation.
But in a blog post published Monday, the MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient said his employer failed to “adequately address” concerns he raised with hosting physicist Steve Koonin to speak about his new book, “Unsettled,” which sows doubt over the reality of human-causing global warming. Santer cast the decision to allow Koonin, a New York University professor, to promote his polemic at an official lab event as a betrayal of the research conducted there for decades.
Koonin's book was not published and not represented as research results. It is a work of survey, critique, and opinion on the current status of climate "research." As such, it requires no "peer review." You are just trying to pretend there is a reason to reject Koonin's observations and conclusions, because they violate your religion.
The scientific field that seems to have the most people skeptical of some of the climate science claims are physicists, this includes numerous Noble prize winners and members of the National Academy of Sciences. I have to admit that I have been to several climate science seminars. Some of been very good and the presenters where very clear about what their results can or cannot say or where more work is needed. On the other hand I have seen some talks that are just cringe worthy with all sorts statements that I have never heard in a scientific talk. In many cases some of these people seemed to have little understanding of their own results and would claim over and over that something is well known and go read so and so paper. There was also lots of excuses for exceptions to rules and we should not worry about this and this but could not explain why, we know all these things to 100% certainly and that by adding more variables it reduces error. I also tried to explain that partial differential equations often do not have unique solutions and that could depend strongly initial conditions or have strong transient effects. They had no clue what any of that meant and where just like...we have a code.
I’ve known Steve Koonin for 30 years. He is a solid scientist who understands the nature of science and scientific debate. Cancel culture and climate Scientology have gone off the deep end. Let the man speak and let his peers decide if his points have merit.
A hissy fit is not helpful. Wielding facts and verifiable data would win the day if Santer wished to challenge Koonin’s writings, but Koonin’s writings pretty much draw all its conclusions from the various official reports on climate change that Santer contributed to.
I’ve read Koonin’s book. It’s premise is not that human effects on climate change are not happening, but that uncertainties are quite large and data is being cherry-picked in the political sphere in such a manner that basically constitutes lying or deliberate misrepresentation of a huge body of work, including such as Santer’s.
But instead of a robust scientific exchange, we get a hissy fit and a very public act of political virtue signaling.
Well I am sure right after Koonin's talk LLNL people will be rushing off to trade in their Priuses for SUVs, getting rid of their solar panels, and throwing out their recycle bins. Any climate science postdoc who would start in the next few months will now decline the offer, the labs will slowly fall apart and years later we will look back and say if only we stoped Koonin from speaking we could have avoided this.
I take that people at LLNL or anyone thinking about working at LLNL are little smarter than Santer gives them credit for. Does he think they are so naive that they should be prevented from seeing a talk? Does he also want the lab to make sure that people cannot see a Koonin online talk or stop them from buying his book?
One argument I keep hearing the cancel culture people make as to why we should just not anyone speak is because we would never allow someone to talk about the flat earth, or humans living with dinosaurs. However this falls under the logical fallacy called false equivalence. It is also called apple and oranges. This argument is used all the time in academics as justification as to why someone should be canceled, particularly people with counter narratives. Prof Koonin is not a Flat farther, his ideas are not insane, he makes what appears to be reasonable points. I do not agree with them all and think that many of this assertions are based on probabilistic assumptions so are certainly not airtight but he should be listened to and countered with a reasonable arguments. In my experience whenever someone wants to silence a speaker in the modern academic world it is because they actually have a legitimate point that goes against someones agenda. I am not saying that Koonin is right but Santers actions now make be but more skeptical of him and his results.
5:54 nailed it. These are difficult times where scientist are increasingly polled as to their views, whether opinion or fact, on a great many issues. It is absolutely essential that “scientific consensus”, mob rule, political posturing, and cancel culture theatrics be left at the door. They have no place in scientific circles.
Great to see LLNL having such a robust exchange. I hope this will continue. When will the LLNL invite a speaker to present the case for nuclear disarmament? THAT would be news worthy!
I’m scratching my head trying to think of any normally-published science-related book for the broader public that would be considered “peer-reviewed…” Can you please provide an example, Lisa?
NAS/NAE/NRC reports are peer-reviewed, but aren’t really books per se. Some other reports are printed in book/booklet form, but that’s not the same either.
When will the LLNL invite a speaker to present the case for nuclear disarmament? THAT would be news worthy!
5/26/2021 11:15 AM
That would be cool, I would be willing to see that talk and debate the person. I would guess they would use some game theory arguments or odds of a nuclear war wiping out humanity versus the risks of letting the enemy win. There are arguments for this and arguments against. I am against it but I would enjoy such a talk.
By the 5/26/2021 2:01 PM, the Lisa person is kind odd, if you look at the other blog that was posted she keeps posting that Koonin cannot say anything about climate science because he has not published in it. This arguments is total bunk. A scientists with a background in computational physics and many body systems can most certainly make insightful comments on other fields that use physics (physics goes into these climate models you know) and accuracy of simulations, and other things like chaos theory ect.
This 5/26/2021 4$6 PM Person is "kind odd". Wow. People have trouble being kind here.
Let's turn the tables... What if a Climate Scientist who has never published a paper that has undergone rigorous peer review on nuclear weapons safety came to LLNL to present misleading opinions on his or her theory on Nuclear Weapons Stewardship. Just think about that and think about how you would feel as a nuclear physicist who has spent your life writing peer reviewed papers to prove advance your research.
"Let's turn the tables... What if a Climate Scientist who has never published a paper that has undergone rigorous peer review on nuclear weapons safety came to LLNL to present misleading opinions on his or her theory on Nuclear Weapons Stewardship. Just think about that and think about how you would feel as a nuclear physicist who has spent your life writing peer reviewed papers to prove advance your research.
5/28/2021 3:09 PM"
I would have no issue with this since it would be straightforward to refute any of their ideas if they are that off or wrong. In fact we have actually had a few talks exactly like this. To honest they have had some points but a bit speculative. Nuclear weapons stewardship gets all kinds of people. In some cases you do have people coming from completely different fields who have never published anything in nuclear physics but can still say some interesting things. This is actually pretty common in science. For example Roger Penrose (the noble prize winner) is not a biologist but had some interesting ideas about the brain works. Dyson talks about all sorts of fields outside of physics yet they are often very insightful. Physics people have also talked about economics, social sciences, computer science and so on often without ever publishing in the fields. Feynman for example gave early talks on quantum computing but never published in the field.
Perhaps it is unkind to say Lisa is odd. If Lisas was a scientists her opinions certainly do seem odd since generally most scientists would understand that one does not need to publish in the field to have something relevant to say about fields. This is particularly true if it is about the methods since many people could be experts in methods such as statistics, computing, and analysis which are techniques that underlay many different fields. In this way someone such as Prof. Koonin, who was a professor of physics for many years at Caltech and has an extensive publication record in computational physics. I think most scientists would agree that he probably could say something relevant about computational and mathematical methods used in other fields. In fact you see all sorts of talks like this with people talking about methods all the time. For example there are many cases of statisticians and mathematics people giving talks on social science studies even though these people have never published a paper in sociology.
I would presume that Lisa is probably not a scientist and really does not understand how science is actually done. Science is not as pure as lay people often think, that is why science has many different checks and balances. Publications is just one of the checks, panels, talks, books, discussions, and conferences are also part of it, and this includes people from fields making comments on other fields. Each of these has its limitations. For example peer review publications are refereed by other people within the field, it is certainly possible that the field is general may using bad methods but if these methods are accepted by the same field than these papers will be published. Anyone who is in science and is well published knows that this happens in fields and subfields of science. This is particularly true of social science fields (look at the reproducibly crises). For example there are journals in paranormal activity which and peer reviewed by other members of that field. They have what they consider to be acceptable methods. Using Lisas logic other scientists are not allowed to make any comments or give talks about flaws in paranormal research since they have never published in the field. That is not how science works.
I know that it is big to be into "be kind". It is better to be kind that right ect.
Science is not about kindness, it is about seeking truth, finding better models for the world where models and theories must withstand all attacks, counter points, and counter evidence. A correct theory will easily be able withstand attacks. Kindness has nothing to do with it
Let’s leave aside the point that much of the nuclear weapons safety work is actually performed at Sandia rather than LLNL. Let’s also put aside the fact that someone from the open literature community would be hard-pressed to access much contemporaneous data on nuclear weapons safety systems, given that those are closely held typically at the S//RD level with a couple of additional Sigma access restrictions on top. But let’s grant your hypothesis that someone in the open could put together an assessment and present it to LLNL.
I’d predict the the speaker would get a polite hearing, and — within the confines of classification — have any errors of facts raised and discussed with a polite and respectful manner. The speaker, again within the confines of classification, would probably also be hosted for a tour of facilities and small group discussions with the lab experts.
I base this on empirical evidence.
Sandia did exactly this in 2014 when it hosted Eric Schlosser to speak on his book “Command and Control.”
So maybe your attempt to justify your bile is misplaced. And the poster who described “Lisa” as “kind (of, [sic]) odd” seems accurate if not perhaps too mild.
I am a climate scientist familiar with Dr. Santer's attribution science and IPCC leadership. I know Prof. Koonin's work and watched his talk linked in the chain. I support open constructive debate among experts and non-experts that is healthy for science. I assert that there is a range of views within climate experts with a vast majority supporting that science has demonstrated for us to act on climate. It is proven that accelerating secular increase in CO2 and other GHG (CH4, N2O, CFCs) is anthropogenic. This additional 4-6 W/2 forcing by 2100 is the root cause of our concern this century as we study the 1 C warming from the 2 W/m2 forcing last century. Positive feedbacks where GHG warming increases water vapor (Clausius Clapyron), the natural precipitable greenhouse gas to exacerbate warming by a factor of 2. This has been empirically proven by experts via the amplified cooling observed after Pinatubo. However, there observationalists and modelers have different views in uncertainties in projections. This is evident in the the factor of 3 variation in climate sensitivities amongst models and empirical estimates using climate records are on the lower end. All IPCC models being treated the same is a weakness that must be addressed by the process. The question whether society has sealed our fate to an existential crisis or we have time to decarbonize energy to contain warming to adaptable levels is open). The reality is that 21st century energy modernization is here and the shift form 20th century oil and gas and combustion systems to EVs and batteries is opening opportunities for decarbonizations and co-benefits of clean air. Over the centuries humans have moved from using wood to coal to oil to gas and now renewables, nuclear and carbon sequestration for clean fossil energy. The conflict between Ben and Steve is symptomatic of how complex systems like to human body or our living planet should be viewed. They both are self-healing but have breaking points. A key point that Steve misses in his paleoclimate analogy is that the Anthropocene RATE of forcing and warming stands out and poses a challenge for adaptions to fauna and flora and may trigger positive feedbacks (e.g albedo, forest die back, wildfires...). By participating Ben should educate Steve and the likes on this. Ben, an accomplished climate attribution leader who set the tone for IPCC is understandably sensitive, but this weakens him as a scientists. I will close with the example of the stratospheric Antarctic Ozone Hole that was not predicted despite decades of studies and shocked the community and world. Models were missing polar stratospheric clouds aerosols that activate halogens to catalytically destroy ozone. Models of non-linear complex climate system will always be incomplete (aerosols, clouds, carbon-climate, snow-ice, jet stream, thermohaline circulation), whether they are buffered or cross thresholds over relevant timescales (50 years) demands sustained monitoring that is a requirement to evaluate, refine and improve our model (with fundamental limits) forecasts. I am sure Ben and Steve will concur on that and that will be a constructive virtual start of dialogue between to limiting science philosophies – the expert and the no-expert – that underpins science and can lead in paradigm shifts – however observations will continue to drive actions and policy as for the ozone hole that will disappear in 2060. I am hopeful that we will modernizing energy will benefit us and our living planet, contain warming below what it would be otherwise, reduce ocean acidification (ignored by Steve) and clean our air. Yes there will be surprises as our complex society interacts with our complex planet and our diverse science allows civilization to constructively deal with this large scale population-technology-environment feedback in the 21st century. I will be happy to moderate a discussion between Ben and Steve to advance the science.
Also, keep this in mind. Steven Koonin has stated in his articles and book that climate science is am immature science. To me, that shows a lot of arrogance. This is a man who may know a lot about Quantum Physics, but in reality, he is a dabbler in Climate Science who was previously employed by the fossil fuel industry - BP.
Ben Santer, on the other hand came to the lab as a promising young scientist and he developed novel statistical methods that have been rigorously peer reviewed for detecting human fingerprints on climate datasaets.
Additionally, LLNL is a clearing house for climate model simulation data from all over the world where each model has participated in intercomparison studies. That is a big deal in the climate community.
For LLNL to invite an ex British Patroleum scientist who states climate science is immature to bring his "performance" disguised as a seminar is a slap in the face of the excellent climate research performed at this institution.
3:09 people of all stripes make all sorts of claims about nuclear weapons in public forums. At the two extremes are Helen Caldecott and (the late) Charlton Heston with many more in between. So what? Intelligent people are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves which arguments have merit without the need for cancel-culture, facebook fact checkers, or “scientific consensus” as advanced by, “science guys” politicians, and actors. Like it or not, Koonin is a well-respected, highly-credentialed, well-reasoned individual with vast experience in this subject. I for one, would love to hear his thoughts on the matter.
To be honest you are one the reasons I am skeptical of climate science. Once again you guys use terminology that I simply do not see being used in any other branch of science. Since I have encountered this before I believe you that you a climate scientist.
"It is proven that accelerating secular increase in CO2 and other GHG (CH4, N2O, CFCs) is anthropogenic."
Science does not prove anything. It gives strong evidence for something. There is good evidence that the increase of CO2 is human caused but it is not proven. Proof is a word that you will never see in other fields of science and it makes me uncomfortable when you use these terms.
"The question whether society has sealed our fate to an existential crisis or we have time to decarbonize energy to contain warming to adaptable levels is open"
"This has been empirically proven by experts via the amplified cooling observed after Pinatubo. "
Nothing in science is ever "empirically proven". Also how would you prove something from one event? That idea you can use Pinatubo as single well controlled parameter to draw a general rule to be "empirically proven" is nuts. Pinatubo could have had all sorts of special conditions for all you know, but you don't. You can use it as benchmark for lack of other data but you have to be honest and say you really have no idea if this a actually a good benchmark.
"Positive feedbacks where GHG warming increases water vapor (Clausius Clapyron)"
Clausius Clapryon holds only in equilibrium conditions. It is equilibrium thermodynamic relation. There are many examples of non-equilibrium conditions where this is violated. This is top of the fact that there is a pressure gradients in the atmosphere, mixing, segrgation and currents. Maybe you could argue that for long times it all mixes and you have an effective mean field that is equilibrium but I am pretty sure that is not been proven.
"The question whether society has sealed our fate to an existential crisis or we have time to decarbonize energy to contain warming to adaptable levels is open"
Existential? Do you even know what that word means. To be clear I have not seen any climate scientists using such a term but only news people.
I will give you credit for posting and pointing out that there is a lot fo complexities in climate science. But I have to say that this is one of the problems I often see with climate scientists is that due to the complexity of what they are doing they are using physics, chemistry, applied math, geology, and that they often do not really understand much of the fundamentals of the methods they are using. For example they often apply equilibrium thermodynamics for systems far out out of equilibrium yet simply do not understand why this could be a problem. They talk about feedback loops ect, yet do not understand how unpredictable complex nonlinear systems can be. For example in they can have a model with many terms but leave out certain nonlinear terms because they do not seem to make sense in equilibrium conditions yet once the system gets going such terms can effective turn on at latter times. I have talked with many of these people and they really do not get the mathematics that underly complex systems. It sort of makes since as they are generally not trained in these fields not to mention that most of these fields are ongoing science right now. Right now we do have a compressive theory of nonequilbrium thermodynamics and complex non-linear systems are still an open problem. The fact that they do not understand these issues along with others makes me really doubt how accurate their bounds or error bars actually are.
Economics is a even older field than climate science and there are many more economists than climate scientists. They face many of the same challenges in terms of complexity of the topic yet the the field is notorious for getting thing wrong all the time.
"Also, keep this in mind. Steven Koonin has stated in his articles and book that climate science is am immature science. To me, that shows a lot of arrogance. "
I am going to be a bit more direct on this. Climate science is a very immature science. Since you need really large scale computers to do this kind of work is at best 40 years old. Physics which has been around since Galileo has had all sorts of pitfalls, dead ends, and false starts and this continues to this day. Biology and chemistry also have similar histories. Climate science is very young in this regard
Climate science in many ways is a much harder field than physics or chemistry as it has to use methods of science from many different fields. You have to have physics, fluid dynamics, applied math methods, and so on. The empirical data one is working with is not well controlled. In physics or chemistry you can go in a lab with well defined variables and do the simplest experiment possible in a repeatable fashion. With climate science you simply do not have this ability so you have to use events like large volcanos or look at data form geological time scales again all systems you simply do not have the same control over as you have in other sciences.
Complexity of the science of complex system is also a immature field and Climate science uses many of the same methods. I would be very weary of anybody in climate science saying it is not a immature field.
"Ben Santer, on the other hand came to the lab as a promising young scientist and he developed novel statistical methods that have been rigorously peer reviewed for detecting human fingerprints on climate datasaets. "
So what. By the way think about the phrasing you are using. They have to find "fingerprints" of human effects. This implies that they have complex data and they have use subtle methods to find evidence of human effects. Also "novel statistical methods" implies new perhaps even immature methods. Just how well controlled and tested are these methods if they are so new?
"have been rigorously peer reviewed"
Ok this is how I know you are not a scientist or have published scientific articles. I will let the cat out of the bag, a whole lot of articles are not very rigorously reviewed. All sorts of junk gets published, if you write a paper no matter how bad there is some journal that will publish it. Also the standards for rigor very greatly from one field to another. The climate science papers are reviewed by other climate scientists. See the issue? You have fields where people publish on paranormal phenomena in journals dedicated to paranormal phenomena. It is "rigorously reviewed" by other people who study paranormal phenomena.
"For LLNL to invite an ex British Patroleum scientist who states climate science is immature"
Koonin was a professor physics for many years at Caltech, he has textbook on computational physics has been widely used. Also places like BP, ExomMobile, Shell ect have many outstanding scientists that have major contributions to physics, geology, chemistry, engineering , computation a methods and infrastructure. In fact using your argument they have many publications in rigorously peer reviewed publications. Have you ever head of the book or series of books " Numerical Recipes is the generic title of a series of books on algorithms and numerical analysis " According to the publisher, Cambridge University Press, the Numerical Recipes books are historically the all-time best-selling books on scientific programming methods. One of the authors is Brian P. Flannery a scientist at ExxoMobile.
People who are attacking or condemning Koonin are climate religionists, not climate scientists. There has been no refutation of his points, which aren't all that technical. I suspect no one who is bashing him here has actually read his book.
Koonin's critique lacks depth knowledge of climate science. He is a smart mathematician, physicist and an influencer. Clearly the latter is driving his agenda. He served as DOE Science director. His views puts him in the same class as Bill Happer, another non-expert climate science critic and former DOE Science director and influencer who was proven wrong in many environmental issues he dabbled in. There are several climate science expert critics who are and will continue to work on the uncertainties to enhance precision and the science is mature and will continue grow given its societal relevance.
"Koonin's critique lacks depth knowledge of climate science."
How would you know? What happens when climate scientists use techniques and relations from mathematics and physics which they themselves lack depth of knowledge? Koonin is certainly qualified to speak on many aspects of climate science particular the physics and mathematics they use. If the climate people get this wrong then much of the other work could also be wrong.
By the way Bill Happer is another outstanding scientist. An outstanding scientists may not know the specifics of a another field but can determine if the people in the field are even using the scientific method correctly.
For example I doubt Bill Happer is expert in paranormal studies studies but could make a judgment on if they are actually using the scientific method when doing their research.
Yes. It is all about falsifiability, as usual. Models, models, and more models. Most can't even predict current conditions, which Koonin points out. No one has any way of gaining experimental data to verify the models. But they have plenty of tweaks to make the models match current observations, which then put the models at odds with other observations and with themselves. Garbage science.
Red/blue panels have been organized including one by APS in 2014 that experts with varied perspectives and non-experts were part of - there has been comprehensive responses by others besides Ben. Here Andy Lacis a NASA-GISS shares response at http://rabett.blogspot.com/2015/04/andy-lacis-writes-to-steve-koonin.html that is worth reading to dig into the rigor with which climate scientist have built their case for climate action on observations and modeling over the past several decades.
observations and modeling over the past several decades.
5/30/2021 6:04 PM
One of the problems with climate science is that the observations have have a very limited time scale. Much of the data is only 50 years old. The older data is taken with different methods and become increasing more uncertain. It would seems like it wold very hard to project anything with certainty for the next 200 years from such limited data.
Also the idea of "experts" is odd. Climate science is so new that one could argue that there are in fact no "experts" in the field, since it has not been around long enough to allow for real experts to arise as we know them in other fields. Now there are people who know more about it than others and people who have been working in it for that last 50 years but the field simply is not mature enough to say that we really understand climate science at an expert level.
"dig into the rigor with which climate scientist have built their case for climate action on observations and modeling over the past several decades."
Well this is kind of the issue is it not. Any time scientists from outside of the field "dig" into the rigor of what is done they become concerned with what they see.
Again climate science is built on numerous other fields including physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, among others. When they start using relations from physics outside of the regions where such relations can be used than you have a problem.
I am not saying climate science is religion. I do not believe that but also think it should be able to address what I see as real issues with the field, which are going to be issues faced by all emerging fields of science. If you want people to trust what you are doing you need to be able to defend it in public forums, science forums, and with other fields of science. Bens letter cam across as very off-putting to me and counter to the scientific method, he does no favor to his field of research. I will assume that this just an issue with Ben and not with the field. In the conversations with the scientists I know who are familiar with the letter they all disagree with the idea of stopping the talk.
Anyone with a high school education in earth science knows that "climate change" is real. The climate is constantly changing. Influenced over the millennia by things outside of our control (solar cycles, etc.) and some things within our control. The contribution of each is being studied. It is also a political football that has been tossed around for over four decades. The real issue is that the US population is getting dumber. The scientific method is "boring". The Socratic method is not used in schools. It is in fact discouraged as it is seen as aggressive and therefore harmful to students. Critical thinking has been replaced by memorization of "facts" provided to the students.
As a Scientific institution, we should AT MINIMUM encourage scientific debate.
Einstein questioned the Cophenhagen quantum interpretation a century ago (likely considering it junk science) - Data proved it otherwise. The foundations of climate science laid 25 years ago are also solid and being validated by observations. While it is complex and system the drivers, feedbacks and signal/noise have been dissected and ae solid. Calling it junk science is inappropriate and inaccurate factually and like quantum theory climate science will continue to gain deeper knowledge of our living planet. Unfortunately there is a lot of at stake and we need to take responsible actions now even in the light of uncertainties.
Physics of Climate Change - a very clear talk by a physicist at Case Western - captures the basics for the public - a lot more has been done - but the gist is clear. Please do watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEoe6YdUeAE
Oh God I do not even know where to start with this. Why...why do you do this to us.
You do not understand what Einstein actually said. He never called quantum physics junk science. He never questioned the data. In fact much of his work also contributed to quantum mechanics, such as the photo-electric effect, Bose-Einstein statistics and EPR. He had questions about the implications of the data and if there could be a deeper theory (an on going endeavor in fact). His thought experiments where also very valuable for showing what the implications of quantum mechanics are.
What on earth does the rise of quantum mechanics have to do with climate science? Sure there are lots of fields that started off with skeptics but then over time became accepted. Part of that acceptance was that they had to have stand up to the critiques and challenges. There is also the large number of fields that also becomes increasing refined over time to correct for point that had been raised by critics. Of course there are plenty of fields and theories that started off as seeming correct that after many years turned out to be incomplete or out and out false. Cherry picking theories like quantum mechanics and saying this is how science works is incorrect as there are plenty of other theories that did not turn out to be correct. The idea of comparing the evolution quantum mechanics to climate science makes no sense anyway. QM was developed from the observations of very well controlled repeatable experiments with very few parameters. For example much of basic of QM arises from studying Hydrogen or individual electrons. In many ways the ingredients for QM is much simpler than anything studied in Climate science. In QM you can measure things very precisely in a lab over and over. In Climate science you cannot do this. These are very different ways of doing science.
"While it is complex and system the drivers, feedbacks and signal/noise have been dissected and ae solid."
What does dissected and solid mean? As you pointed out that these systems are very complex, and right now we do not really have a reliable way to predict how complex systems actually behave. We cannot make a model and run experiments on the the earth for 500 years and do this for thousands of times to test the predictions or refine our models. This
"The foundations of climate science laid 25 years ago are also solid and being validated by observations."
Just how solid are they? The foundations of climate science are also laid out by physics, applied math, and computational science. A good question to ask is just how well do climate scientists really understand this, particularly the mathematics that goes into their models. Also is their work really being validated by observations? Remember (hide the decline!!!), just how good have their predictions been so far?
"like quantum theory climate science will continue to gain deeper knowledge of our living planet."
I cannot figure out what this even means. How does QM give deep knowledge to our living planet?
Ok maybe I am being trolled by some climate denier nut pretending to be a climate scientists to make them look bad. If so you got me. I am going to assume you are a troll because it would make feel better about humanity than if you are actually serious.
That guy makes a bunch of assumptions that are either not proven or simply leaving out a bunch of other possible effects that could be relevant. It seems more like the simple calculations for a actual greenhouse but again the earth is way more complex than that. In other words there are probably many more terms that may seem small so they are ignored in these simplistic approaches but could very important at later times. These kind of effects come up time and time again in complex systems. Anybody who studies these systems knows this.
Excellent post/response. He unfortunately is not a troll.
6/01/2021 5:29 PM
I keep seeing this argument that goes like this.Some people did not believe in quantum mechanics at first but it turned out to be right, therefore every new theory that has have some doubters must also be true.
Besides being a logical fallacy this is not even what happened with quantum mechanics. Sure lots of people had issues with the implications of quantum mechanics especially in terms of determinism but no one was denying the experimental observations. People where not saying that the hydrogen spectra lines are fake or that the Stern Gerlach results are wrong. To this day you still have people working on interpretations of quantum mechanics. Things like is the wave function real, consistent histories, Bohmian mechanics, and even the many worlds interpretation.
Koonin chaired an APS red/blue panel with experts and non-experts in 2014 to revise its statement on climate. He failed to change that and resigned. He followed up with red/blue repeat for Trump with Happer that failed too. He does not have any credibility in the climate science community and the book and media are his way out. to exert influence. Yes he is accomplished non-expert in his field. I would like him, to debate Stephen Chu another non-expert but a much better informed physicist who understands climate science.
"debate Stephen Chu another non-expert but a much better informed physicist who understands climate science. "
I think you are the same person who keeps saying Koonin does not have a degree in climate science so he has no expertise. Well guess what Chu does not have a degree in climate science so how is he better informed? I think Chu just agrees with your opinion more so that must make him better informed in your mind. With your approach Chu should not have any weight in the climate science community either.
On the face value I would probably lend more weight to Koonin since his background is in computational modeling and computational physics. Chu has a background in experimental optical physics. Perhaps Chu does know more but just from their actual scientific backgrounds I would have lean toward Koonin having more insight into issues with climate science.
What is not recognized by many is that the climate science is built around observations and this has had a very rich and creative history starting with Charle's Keeling and expanded significantly with Ben's attribution. It is not computationally centric that must be stressed to all.
BS. It is built around adjusting models to try to match spotty and inconsistent "observations." It lacks one crucial aspect of "science": Experiment to confirm theory.
What is not recognized by many is that the climate science is built around observations and this has had a very rich and creative history starting with Charle's Keeling and expanded significantly with Ben's attribution. It is not computationally centric that must be stressed to all.
6/02/2021 4:26 PM
You have to be careful with this. In terms of observations the first one that they really noticed is the increase in CO2. They have pretty good numbers gong back 70 years and that growth is on solid footing. Now the question as to what is causing the rise is a bit open but burning lost of fossil fuel seems like a strong candidate but still not exactly certain. It could be some other human thing as well like plastic killing plankton , large scale farming, or maybe Dodo birds got rid of C02 by some complex method we do not understand. There is also still the possibility that it is arising due some other natural effect like solar cycles, maybe we are going through a dark matter cloud or something we just have not understood yet.
The other observations are like polar ice caps melting, forest growth or glaciers shrinking is based on short time data and it is not clear what exactly they mean. The "global temperatures" show some trends but again have large fluctuations. I and many others would argue that as far as weather there is no effects that you can point to in the last 40 years that you can say is a definitive observation of the effects of climate change. Every time a hurricane hits Florida does not count as proof. We simply do have enough precise knowledge of the past weather for hundred or thousands of years to make any kind of strong case that the weather today is somehow altered from the past due to climate change. Saying there is fires in California doe not cut it, since there is plenty of evidence of much larger evidence of fire in Californias past. Saying we have had category 5 hurricanes now is sort of pointless since we had now idea how many category 5 huricanes we had 500 years ago.
In other words the observational data is not as strong or nearly as certain as you claim. This is on top of the fact that they have to as you say "creative" measures of the data make arguments. In other other words they have to make some assumptions about the data using relations from physics, chemistry, and statistics and I think they often do not understand this very well but think that they do.
The next thing to try and figure out if the CO2 will give rise to warming and how much. Now the things get really complicated. Sure C02 helps with greenhouses but the earth is not a greenhouse. This is where the computational modeling comes. If you look at history of climate change claims they really got going after they could start doing the large computational modeling.
Now I do not doubt Ben is a good scientist and all that but he has to look at complex data, make assumptions about that data and find evidence for fingerprints, but he and others cannot do controlled experiments on this. One has to worry that they need to find fingerprints so they will find fingerprints.
Integrated data-model-ML to advance climate science - constructive new article in PHYSICS TODAY https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.4772
SciAm published a criticism of the book by Koonin. It was by 12 authors. I have to admit I have never seen an article like this in SciAm nor have I ever seen scientists write like this. It reads like article one would see Huffington post not something you would ever see in SciAm. I am rather shocked that scientists would write such a thing.
Steve Koonin wanted to respond but SciAm would not publish his letter. I have read the criticism and Koonins response. He claims they are not being honest about what he says. The SciAm seems to be lots of insults and innuendo, much of it irrelevant to the science. Koonins response was posted on a website linked below.
Steve Koonin responds to an article in SciAm
SciAm rejected to publish the following response by Dr S. Koonin Koonin responds to a Scientific American article by Oreskes et al.
Scientific American has published a criticism of me and my recent book, Unsettled. Most of that article’s 1,000 words are scurrilous ad hominem and guilt-by-association aspersions from the twelve co-authors. Only three scientific criticisms are buried within their spluttering; here is my response to each them.
In defense of rigor in climate science and lack of in the non experts' understanding https://greatwhitecon.info/2021/05/unsettling-koonin-critiques-continue/
"In defense of rigor in climate science and lack of in the non experts' understanding https://greatwhitecon.info/2021/05/unsettling-koonin-critiques-continue/ "
I went to that site. What on earth was that? It looks like 3rd grade ramblings. It is just clownish the way it comes across. Time and time again the Koonin critics do not address the actual point raised. Instead you keep getting this argument that he does not have a degree in climate science, he worked for BP, he is this or that.
I find that saying Koonin is not an expert is ironic since climate scientists use physics, applied math, computer modeling, complexity and statistics yet in my dealings with them they often do not really understand even the basic science behind these fields. For example when it comes to statistics they do not understand distributions and rare events, Black swan events, or fat tails. This is a property that arises in complex systems particularly systems out of equilibrium. One example is economics where time and time again economists have failed to get this point which leads to all sorts of problems. To be fair it is a hard problem as rare events statistics is not easy to grasp. There are many cases where Gaussian statistics works however once you are in a non-equilibrium situation things can be very different. I have had conversations with some climate modelers who are in fact dealing with non-equilibrium systems and they simply do not get this point. One of the big issues I have with this field is they often use equilibrium relations in their studies since these are often well defined and there is lots of tools from this approach however this is going to be rather limited in understanding and predicting non-equilibrium systems
Here is an independent analysis of climate records by a group of Berkeley physicist that affirmed climate experts findings http://berkeleyearth.org/archive/summary-of-findings - They published it in peer review journals
This is the same physicists (Muller) that just put out a report that Covid was engineered from the Wuhan Lab https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/damning-science-shows-covid-19-likely-engineered-in-lab/
He seems to be a tad bit of a crack pot, but who know maybe climate change is real and maybe covid-19 was created in the Wuhan lab.
The Berkley work was looking to see if warming was occurring. Rising CO2 and warming are on pretty solid ground however that is not the issue raised by Koonin who has acknowledged both effects. The issue is how accurately can we model the future warming and if decisions about ecommics should be so politicalized.
Koonin is no different than Muller they both are taking an independent look at climate data and modeling and as Muller did will recognize that the experts recognize and have addressed the nuances and uncertainties over many decades. The scientific method works and hope Koonin follows the same path and writes peer reviewed papers or critiques and draws defensible conclusions rather than write w all street journals, popular books and pump up his volume on right wing TV media.
It is kind of apparent that you are not very familiar with the "peer review" process or publication. Just because something is peer reviewed does not make it true. You also have to remember who is "peer" reviewing these papers, fields of research can become toxic, or corrupted. The biggest corruptor is of course politics, but others can come into play like religion, money and so on. Do you actually think that if Koonin analyzed some data and came to the "wrong" conclusion that potential climate science referees would ever let that through? If you do not believe me just ask yourself why they do not even want him to speak. Suppose he did get something published in a journal, I can tell you exactly what would happen, there would a letter writing campaign to boycott the journal from now on, unless the paper is withdrawn. Journal editors knows this already so there is simply no way Koonin is going to be able to publish something in any kind of journal they would acknowledge as legitimate. Muller on the other hand came to the right conclusions so his paper can be published. Speaking of "feedbacks" once this gets going, other people who study climate learn really fast to get in line or get marginalized. Other young people see very fast in graduate school how this works and simply leave this line of research since they see how much politics is involved.
How do I know this about journals?, because this has already happened in several fields [1,2]. Not to mention several professors in climate science simply leave academics because they feel the field is getting politically crazy [3]
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Curry Curry retired in 2017 from her tenured position as a professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology at age 63, because of what she called "the poisonous nature of the scientific discussion around human-caused global warming". Michael Mann said climate science would be stronger without her because of her "confusionism and denialism"
Could you imagine a physicists saying that quantum mechanics would be stronger without him because of his denialism? The exact opposite is true.
The comments by Mann make me very leery of some of the climate science researchers since they often use language that I have never heard in any kind of the field of hard science.
Mann is a reasonable antidote to Koonin in public and has a book out that also shows a cirque of doomism - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview
Mann is a reasonable antidote to Koonin in public and has a book out that also shows a cirque of doomism - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview
6/11/2021 11:47 AM
Mann is also repeatedly made statements that sound utterly unscientific and I could never imagine a physicists or anybody else in science would ever make. This seems to be common feature among climate scientists.
For example I simply could not imagine other scientists attempting to stifle the speech of other view points such as what has Ben done. Scientists address speech with other speech or more precisely evidence which is one of the foundations of the scientific method. Ben is closer to the Vatican trying to stop Galieo from speaking.
In any case I agree the best counter to Koonin is the book by Mann and for Mann to make give his own talks. It is not trying to ban Koonin from speaking.
55 comments:
Scientific research is not proven in the theater of public opinion. I disagree with many comments here that say Professor Koonan's work should be presented in an open meeting and then debated among LLNL scientists in an open forum. The reasoning here is that Professor Koonan wrote a book with his scientific views that was not peer reviewed. Why not invite Sean Hannity to LLNL and have him debate Ben Santer on Climate Science? Why, because it would make a farce out of rock solid peer reviewed research.
Sorry Lisa. A lot of scientific discussions take place without peer review. It would be a strange world if you needed a Physical Review Letter before you could talk about a subject. Universities and the labs have seminars where results are discussed without the requirement of pre publication. Also, you forget that Koonin is a scientist (theoretical physics, MIT). The comparison to a Fox News celebrity isn’t appropriate,
"Sean Hannity to LLNL and have him debate Ben Santer on Climate Science? Why, because it would make a farce out of rock solid peer reviewed research."
Sean Hannity does not have a Phd in physics or is an expert computational physics. Prof. Koonan does.
Also this is not a theater of public opinion it is a scientific seminar with questions and answers. Seminars, talks, debates and colloquiums are not theater but essential to the scientific endeavor. Perhaps you are not familiar with how scientific discourse is done but LLNL has seminars every day, to call them theater is ridicules.
I think Prof. Koonin should speak. The argument I am hearing is that since Prof. Koonin is not a climate scientist, he has no expertise in the area. He does, however, have expertise in the scientific method, scientific computing, examination of data, the limits determining what models can and cannot tell you, and mathematics; thus he is entirely qualified to say something about the climate modeling and climate science approaches.
If in fact Prof. Koonin is so incredibly ill-informed about climate science, then during the talk itself or during a follow-up seminar, Ben Santer should easily be able to refute what Prof. Koonin has said, or at least give an argument as to why Prof. Koonin's case has some flaws or is not certain.
The idea that one has to be working directly in a specific scientific field in order to say something relevant or valid about it is nonsense. One either has intelligent points or not; what is of importance is the argument the person makes, not who the person is. Part of the process of science is debate, which includes hearing different arguments for and against an idea or theory, examination of the evidence, and proposing alternative explanations. If a scientific theory is correct, it will be able to withstand such counterarguments. In fact, if Santer is so confident in his viewpoint, the talk by Prof. Koonin could be seen as an opportunity to sway people who have doubts. Such people will be able to hear the talk and listen to the points raised by Prof. Koonin, and then hear a reply by Santer. If Santer can adequately refute the points that Dr. Koonin makes, many people with doubts will become more confident in the climate science.
I find it disturbing that Santer would want to shut down scientific debate on these topics and also find it in conflict with how science is done. Climate science by its very nature deals with extremely complex systems containing many variables, so high degrees of certainty about anything in this field is difficult to achieve. I agree that reasonable bounds and probabilities can be established, but one has to be honest about just how certain any of this work actually is. One only has to look at pandemic and economics forecasting to get an idea of how tricky predicting the behavior of complex systems can be. Many scientists have doubts about how accurate long term climate modeling actually is and how well controlled the parameters are. Shutting down other scientific voices on this issue is not going to help with those doubts. I would also argue that not allowing Prof. Koonin to speak will discourage the best climate scientists from coming to LLNL or any NNSA lab since it would show that the NNSA labs are not abiding by the accepted procedures for scientific dialogue. Ultimately I think Ben Santer is hurting his scientific field and hurting LLNL. I would propose that instead of trying to cancel Prof. Koonin's talk, LLNL should allow the talk to be given and then also arrange for Santer or others from that group to give a talk representing their viewpoint. I find the idea of employing the so-called cancel culture techniques in scientific fields to be toxic and completely counter to the scientific method.
Charles Reichhardt
Fellow of the American Physical Society
Theoretical Division
Los Alamos National Laboratory
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/santer-koonin-climate_n_60ad529fe4b0a24c4f821f58
Hey this stuff made it into Huff post
Ben Santer, one of the world’s best-known climate scientists, announced this week he is severing ties with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after the federal research facility invited a climate denier to give a book talk this Thursday.
Santer had planned to retire from the lab, where he has worked for 29 years, in September, but would continue his award-winning atmospheric research on a part-time basis and maintain his affiliation.
But in a blog post published Monday, the MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient said his employer failed to “adequately address” concerns he raised with hosting physicist Steve Koonin to speak about his new book, “Unsettled,” which sows doubt over the reality of human-causing global warming. Santer cast the decision to allow Koonin, a New York University professor, to promote his polemic at an official lab event as a betrayal of the research conducted there for decades.
Koonin is on the LLNS board of governors and Livermore's Director, Budil, used to work for him at DOE. So, Koonin may have just invited himself.
Koonin's book was not published and not represented as research results. It is a work of survey, critique, and opinion on the current status of climate "research." As such, it requires no "peer review." You are just trying to pretend there is a reason to reject Koonin's observations and conclusions, because they violate your religion.
The scientific field that seems to have the most people skeptical of some of the climate science claims are physicists, this includes numerous Noble prize winners and members of the National Academy of Sciences. I have to admit that I have been to several climate science seminars. Some of been very good and the presenters where very clear about what their results can or cannot say or where more work is needed. On the other hand I have seen some talks that are just cringe worthy with all sorts statements that I have never heard in a scientific talk. In many cases some of these people seemed to have little understanding of their own results and would claim over and over that something is well known and go read so and so paper. There was also lots of excuses for exceptions to rules and we should not worry about this and this but could not explain why, we know all these things to 100% certainly and that by adding more variables it reduces error. I also tried to explain that partial differential equations often do not have unique solutions and that could depend strongly initial conditions or have strong transient effects. They had no clue what any of that meant and where just like...we have a code.
I’ve known Steve Koonin for 30 years. He is a solid scientist who understands the nature of science and scientific debate. Cancel culture and climate Scientology have gone off the deep end. Let the man speak and let his peers decide if his points have merit.
A hissy fit is not helpful. Wielding facts and verifiable data would win the day if Santer wished to challenge Koonin’s writings, but Koonin’s writings pretty much draw all its conclusions from the various official reports on climate change that Santer contributed to.
I’ve read Koonin’s book. It’s premise is not that human effects on climate change are not happening, but that uncertainties are quite large and data is being cherry-picked in the political sphere in such a manner that basically constitutes lying or deliberate misrepresentation of a huge body of work, including such as Santer’s.
But instead of a robust scientific exchange, we get a hissy fit and a very public act of political virtue signaling.
What a regrettable way to cap off a career.
Well I am sure right after Koonin's talk LLNL people will be rushing off to trade in their Priuses for SUVs, getting rid of their solar panels, and throwing out their recycle bins. Any climate science postdoc who would start in the next few months will now decline the offer, the labs will slowly fall apart and years later we will look back and say if only we stoped Koonin from speaking we could have avoided this.
I take that people at LLNL or anyone thinking about working at LLNL are little smarter than Santer gives them credit for. Does he think they are so naive that they should be prevented from seeing a talk? Does he also want the lab to make sure that people cannot see a Koonin online talk or stop them from buying his book?
One argument I keep hearing the cancel culture people make as to why we should just not anyone speak is because we would never allow someone to talk about the flat earth, or humans living with dinosaurs.
However this falls under the logical fallacy called false equivalence. It is also called apple and oranges. This argument is used all the time in academics as justification as to why someone should be canceled, particularly people with counter narratives. Prof Koonin is not a Flat farther, his ideas are not insane, he makes what appears to be reasonable points. I do not agree with them all and think that many of this assertions are based on probabilistic assumptions so are certainly not airtight but he should be listened to and countered with a reasonable arguments. In my experience whenever someone wants to silence a speaker in the modern academic world it is because they actually have a legitimate point that goes against someones agenda. I am not saying that Koonin is right but Santers actions now make be but more skeptical of him and his results.
5:54 nailed it. These are difficult times where scientist are increasingly polled as to their views, whether opinion or fact, on a great many issues. It is absolutely essential that “scientific consensus”, mob rule, political posturing, and cancel culture theatrics be left at the door. They have no place in scientific circles.
Great to see LLNL having such a robust exchange. I hope this will continue. When will the LLNL invite a speaker to present the case for nuclear disarmament? THAT would be news worthy!
Here is video of one of the Koonin talks. It is very well done. One thing is that the talk does not deny climate change by humans at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY5gEwZHKI8&t=111s
I’m scratching my head trying to think of any normally-published science-related book for the broader public that would be considered “peer-reviewed…” Can you please provide an example, Lisa?
NAS/NAE/NRC reports are peer-reviewed, but aren’t really books per se. Some other reports are printed in book/booklet form, but that’s not the same either.
Textbooks are edited, not really peer-reviewed.
When will the LLNL invite a speaker to present the case for nuclear disarmament? THAT would be news worthy!
5/26/2021 11:15 AM
That would be cool, I would be willing to see that talk and debate the person. I would guess they would use some game theory arguments or odds of a nuclear war wiping out humanity versus the risks of letting the enemy win. There are arguments for this and arguments against. I am against it but I would enjoy such a talk.
By the 5/26/2021 2:01 PM, the Lisa person is kind odd, if you look at the other blog that
was posted she keeps posting that Koonin cannot say anything about climate science because he has not published in it. This arguments is total bunk. A scientists with a background in computational physics and many body systems can most certainly make insightful comments on
other fields that use physics (physics goes into these climate models you know) and accuracy of simulations, and other things like chaos theory ect.
5/26/2021 4:46 PM
This 5/26/2021 4$6 PM Person is "kind odd". Wow. People have trouble being kind here.
Let's turn the tables... What if a Climate Scientist who has never published a paper that has undergone rigorous peer review on nuclear weapons safety came to LLNL to present misleading opinions on his or her theory on Nuclear Weapons Stewardship. Just think about that and think about how you would feel as a nuclear physicist who has spent your life writing peer reviewed papers to prove advance your research.
"Let's turn the tables... What if a Climate Scientist who has never published a paper that has undergone rigorous peer review on nuclear weapons safety came to LLNL to present misleading opinions on his or her theory on Nuclear Weapons Stewardship. Just think about that and think about how you would feel as a nuclear physicist who has spent your life writing peer reviewed papers to prove advance your research.
5/28/2021 3:09 PM"
I would have no issue with this since it would be straightforward to refute any of their ideas if they are that off or wrong. In fact we have actually had a few talks exactly like this. To honest they have had some points but a bit speculative. Nuclear weapons stewardship gets all kinds of people. In some cases you do have people coming from completely different fields who have never published anything in nuclear physics but can still say some interesting things. This is actually pretty common in science. For example Roger Penrose (the noble prize winner) is not a biologist but had some interesting ideas about the brain works. Dyson talks about all sorts of fields outside of physics yet they are often very insightful. Physics people have also talked about economics, social sciences, computer science and so on often without ever publishing in the fields. Feynman for example gave early talks on quantum computing but never published in the field.
Perhaps it is unkind to say Lisa is odd. If Lisas was a scientists her opinions certainly do seem odd since generally most scientists would understand that one does not need to publish in the field to have something relevant to say about fields. This is particularly true if it is about the methods since many people could be experts in methods such as statistics, computing, and analysis which are techniques that underlay many different fields. In this way someone such as Prof. Koonin, who was a professor of physics for many years at Caltech and has an extensive publication record in computational physics. I think most scientists would agree that he probably could say something relevant about computational and mathematical methods used in other fields. In fact you see all sorts of talks like this with people talking about methods all the time. For example there are many cases of statisticians and mathematics people giving talks on social science studies even though these people have never published a paper in sociology.
I would presume that Lisa is probably not a scientist and really does not understand how science is actually done. Science is not as pure as lay people often think, that is why science has many different checks and balances. Publications is just one of the checks, panels, talks, books, discussions, and conferences are also part of it, and this includes people from fields making comments on
other fields. Each of these has its limitations. For example peer review publications are refereed by other people within the field, it is certainly possible that the field is general may using bad methods but if these methods are accepted by the same field than these papers will be published. Anyone who is in science and is well published knows that this happens in fields and subfields of science. This is particularly true of social science fields (look at the reproducibly crises). For example there are journals in paranormal activity which and peer reviewed by other members of that field. They have what they consider to be acceptable methods. Using Lisas logic other scientists are not allowed to make any comments or give talks about flaws in paranormal research since they have never published in the field. That is not how science works.
"People have trouble being kind here."
I know that it is big to be into "be kind". It is better to be kind that right ect.
Science is not about kindness, it is about seeking truth, finding better models for the world where models and theories must withstand all attacks, counter points, and counter evidence. A correct theory will easily be able withstand attacks. Kindness has nothing to do with it
Interesting point from 5/26/2021 4:46 PM.
Let’s leave aside the point that much of the nuclear weapons safety work is actually performed at Sandia rather than LLNL. Let’s also put aside the fact that someone from the open literature community would be hard-pressed to access much contemporaneous data on nuclear weapons safety systems, given that those are closely held typically at the S//RD level with a couple of additional Sigma access restrictions on top. But let’s grant your hypothesis that someone in the open could put together an assessment and present it to LLNL.
I’d predict the the speaker would get a polite hearing, and — within the confines of classification — have any errors of facts raised and discussed with a polite and respectful manner. The speaker, again within the confines of classification, would probably also be hosted for a tour of facilities and small group discussions with the lab experts.
I base this on empirical evidence.
Sandia did exactly this in 2014 when it hosted Eric Schlosser to speak on his book “Command and Control.”
So maybe your attempt to justify your bile is misplaced. And the poster who described “Lisa” as “kind (of, [sic]) odd” seems accurate if not perhaps too mild.
I am a climate scientist familiar with Dr. Santer's attribution science and IPCC leadership. I know Prof. Koonin's work and watched his talk linked in the chain. I support open constructive debate among experts and non-experts that is healthy for science. I assert that there is a range of views within climate experts with a vast majority supporting that science has demonstrated for us to act on climate. It is proven that accelerating secular increase in CO2 and other GHG (CH4, N2O, CFCs) is anthropogenic. This additional 4-6 W/2 forcing by 2100 is the root cause of our concern this century as we study the 1 C warming from the 2 W/m2 forcing last century. Positive feedbacks where GHG warming increases water vapor (Clausius Clapyron), the natural precipitable greenhouse gas to exacerbate warming by a factor of 2. This has been empirically proven by experts via the amplified cooling observed after Pinatubo. However, there observationalists and modelers have different views in uncertainties in projections. This is evident in the the factor of 3 variation in climate sensitivities amongst models and empirical estimates using climate records are on the lower end. All IPCC models being treated the same is a weakness that must be addressed by the process. The question whether society has sealed our fate to an existential crisis or we have time to decarbonize energy to contain warming to adaptable levels is open). The reality is that 21st century energy modernization is here and the shift form 20th century oil and gas and combustion systems to EVs and batteries is opening opportunities for decarbonizations and co-benefits of clean air. Over the centuries humans have moved from using wood to coal to oil to gas and now renewables, nuclear and carbon sequestration for clean fossil energy. The conflict between Ben and Steve is symptomatic of how complex systems like to human body or our living planet should be viewed. They both are self-healing but have breaking points. A key point that Steve misses in his paleoclimate analogy is that the Anthropocene RATE of forcing and warming stands out and poses a challenge for adaptions to fauna and flora and may trigger positive feedbacks (e.g albedo, forest die back, wildfires...). By participating Ben should educate Steve and the likes on this. Ben, an accomplished climate attribution leader who set the tone for IPCC is understandably sensitive, but this weakens him as a scientists. I will close with the example of the stratospheric Antarctic Ozone Hole that was not predicted despite decades of studies and shocked the community and world. Models were missing polar stratospheric clouds aerosols that activate halogens to catalytically destroy ozone. Models of non-linear complex climate system will always be incomplete (aerosols, clouds, carbon-climate, snow-ice, jet stream, thermohaline circulation), whether they are buffered or cross thresholds over relevant timescales (50 years) demands sustained monitoring that is a requirement to evaluate, refine and improve our model (with fundamental limits) forecasts. I am sure Ben and Steve will concur on that and that will be a constructive virtual start of dialogue between to limiting science philosophies – the expert and the no-expert – that underpins science and can lead in paradigm shifts – however observations will continue to drive actions and policy as for the ozone hole that will disappear in 2060. I am hopeful that we will modernizing energy will benefit us and our living planet, contain warming below what it would be otherwise, reduce ocean acidification (ignored by Steve) and clean our air. Yes there will be surprises as our complex society interacts with our complex planet and our diverse science allows civilization to constructively deal with this large scale population-technology-environment feedback in the 21st century. I will be happy to moderate a discussion between Ben and Steve to advance the science.
Also, keep this in mind. Steven Koonin has stated in his articles and book that climate science is am immature science. To me, that shows a lot of arrogance. This is a man who may know a lot about Quantum Physics, but in reality, he is a dabbler in Climate Science who was previously employed by the fossil fuel industry - BP.
Ben Santer, on the other hand came to the lab as a promising young scientist and he developed novel statistical methods that have been rigorously peer reviewed for detecting human fingerprints on climate datasaets.
Additionally, LLNL is a clearing house for climate model simulation data from all over the world where each model has participated in intercomparison studies. That is a big deal in the climate community.
For LLNL to invite an ex British Patroleum scientist who states climate science is immature to bring his "performance" disguised as a seminar is a slap in the face of the excellent climate research performed at this institution.
3:09 people of all stripes make all sorts of claims about nuclear weapons in public forums. At the two extremes are Helen Caldecott and (the late) Charlton Heston with many more in between. So what? Intelligent people are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves which arguments have merit without the need for cancel-culture, facebook fact checkers, or “scientific consensus” as advanced by, “science guys” politicians, and actors. Like it or not, Koonin is a well-respected, highly-credentialed, well-reasoned individual with vast experience in this subject. I for one, would love to hear his thoughts on the matter.
5/29/2021 8:19 AM
To be honest you are one the reasons I am skeptical of climate science. Once again you guys use terminology that I simply do not see being used in any other branch of science. Since I have encountered this before I believe you that you a climate scientist.
"It is proven that accelerating secular increase in CO2 and other GHG (CH4, N2O, CFCs) is anthropogenic."
Science does not prove anything. It gives strong evidence for something. There is good evidence that the increase of CO2 is human caused but it is not proven. Proof is a word that you will never see in other fields of science and it makes me uncomfortable when you use these terms.
"The question whether society has sealed our fate to an existential crisis or we have time to decarbonize energy to contain warming to adaptable levels is open"
"This has been empirically proven by experts via the amplified cooling observed after Pinatubo. "
Nothing in science is ever "empirically proven". Also how would you prove something from one event? That idea you can use Pinatubo as single well controlled parameter to draw a general rule to be "empirically proven" is nuts. Pinatubo could have had all sorts of special conditions for all you know, but you don't. You can use it as benchmark for lack of other data but you have to be honest and say you really have no idea if this a actually a good benchmark.
"Positive feedbacks where GHG warming increases water vapor (Clausius Clapyron)"
Clausius Clapryon holds only in equilibrium conditions. It is equilibrium thermodynamic relation. There are many examples of non-equilibrium conditions where this is violated. This is top of the fact that there is a pressure gradients in the atmosphere, mixing, segrgation and currents. Maybe you could argue that for long times it all mixes and you have an effective mean field that is equilibrium but I am pretty sure that is not been proven.
"The question whether society has sealed our fate to an existential crisis or we have time to decarbonize energy to contain warming to adaptable levels is open"
Existential? Do you even know what that word means. To be clear I have not seen any climate scientists using such a term but only news people.
I will give you credit for posting and pointing out that there is a lot fo complexities in climate science. But I have to say that this is one of the problems I often see with climate scientists is that due to the complexity of what they are doing they are using physics, chemistry, applied math, geology, and that they often do not really understand much of the fundamentals of the methods they are using. For example they often apply equilibrium thermodynamics for systems far out out of equilibrium yet simply do not understand why this could be a problem. They talk about feedback loops ect, yet do not understand how unpredictable complex nonlinear systems can be. For example in they can have a model with many terms but leave out certain nonlinear terms because they do not seem to make sense in equilibrium conditions yet once the system gets going such terms can effective turn on at latter times. I have talked with many of these people and they really do not get the mathematics that underly complex systems. It sort of makes since as they are generally not trained in these fields not to mention that most of these fields are ongoing science right now. Right now we do have a compressive theory of nonequilbrium thermodynamics and complex non-linear systems are still an open problem. The fact that they do not understand these issues along with others makes me really doubt how accurate their bounds or error bars actually are.
Economics is a even older field than climate science and there are many more economists than climate scientists. They face many of the same challenges in terms of complexity of the topic yet the the field is notorious for getting thing wrong all the time.
5/29/2021 10:58 AM
"Also, keep this in mind. Steven Koonin has stated in his articles and book that climate science is am immature science. To me, that shows a lot of arrogance. "
I am going to be a bit more direct on this. Climate science is a very immature science. Since you need really large scale computers to do this kind of work is at best 40 years old. Physics which has been around since Galileo has had all sorts of pitfalls, dead ends, and false starts and this continues to this day. Biology and chemistry also have similar histories. Climate science is very young in this regard
Climate science in many ways is a much harder field than physics or chemistry as it has to use methods of science from many different fields. You have to have physics, fluid dynamics, applied math methods, and so on. The empirical data one is working with is not well controlled. In physics or chemistry you can go in a lab with well defined variables and do the simplest experiment possible
in a repeatable fashion. With climate science you simply do not have this ability so you have to use events like large volcanos or look at data form geological time scales again all systems you simply do not have the same control over as you have in other sciences.
Complexity of the science of complex system is also a immature field and Climate science uses many of the same methods. I would be very weary of anybody in climate science saying it is not a immature field.
"Ben Santer, on the other hand came to the lab as a promising young scientist and he developed novel statistical methods that have been rigorously peer reviewed for detecting human fingerprints on climate datasaets. "
So what. By the way think about the phrasing you are using. They have to find "fingerprints" of human effects. This implies that they have complex data and they have use subtle methods to find evidence of human effects. Also "novel statistical methods" implies new perhaps even immature methods. Just how well controlled and tested are these methods if they are so new?
"have been rigorously peer reviewed"
Ok this is how I know you are not a scientist or have published scientific articles. I will let the cat out of the bag, a whole lot of articles
are not very rigorously reviewed. All sorts of junk gets published, if you write a paper no matter how bad there is some journal that will publish it. Also the standards for rigor very greatly from one field to another. The climate science papers are reviewed by other climate scientists. See the issue? You have fields where people publish on paranormal phenomena in journals dedicated to paranormal phenomena. It is "rigorously reviewed" by other people who study paranormal phenomena.
https://www.journalnetwork.org/journals/international-journal-of-paranormal-investigation
https://www.journalnetwork.org/journals/international-journal-of-paranormal-investigationhttps://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/publications/academic-publications/paranormal-phenomena-academic-publications/
"For LLNL to invite an ex British Patroleum scientist who states climate science is immature"
Koonin was a professor physics for many years at Caltech, he has textbook on computational physics has been widely used. Also
places like BP, ExomMobile, Shell ect have many outstanding scientists that have major contributions to physics, geology, chemistry, engineering , computation a methods and infrastructure. In fact using your argument they have many publications in rigorously peer reviewed publications. Have you ever head of the book or series of books " Numerical Recipes is the generic title of a series of books on algorithms and numerical analysis " According to the publisher, Cambridge University Press, the Numerical Recipes books are historically the all-time best-selling books on scientific programming methods. One of the authors is Brian P. Flannery a scientist at ExxoMobile.
People who are attacking or condemning Koonin are climate religionists, not climate scientists. There has been no refutation of his points, which aren't all that technical. I suspect no one who is bashing him here has actually read his book.
Koonin's critique lacks depth knowledge of climate science. He is a smart mathematician, physicist and an influencer. Clearly the latter is driving his agenda. He served as DOE Science director. His views puts him in the same class as Bill Happer, another non-expert climate science critic and former DOE Science director and influencer who was proven wrong in many environmental issues he dabbled in. There are several climate science expert critics who are and will continue to work on the uncertainties to enhance precision and the science is mature and will continue grow given its societal relevance.
"Koonin's critique lacks depth knowledge of climate science."
How would you know? What happens when climate scientists use techniques and relations from mathematics and physics which they themselves lack depth of knowledge? Koonin is certainly qualified to speak on many aspects of climate science particular the physics and mathematics they use. If the climate people get this wrong then much of the other work could also be wrong.
By the way Bill Happer is another outstanding scientist. An outstanding scientists may not know the specifics of a another field but can determine if the people in the field are even using the scientific method correctly.
For example I doubt Bill Happer is expert in paranormal studies studies but could make a judgment on if they are actually using the scientific method when doing their research.
Well, one thing is clear. Climate change is not science, it is religion.
Climate change is not science, it is religion.
5/30/2021 2:25 PM
Yes. It is all about falsifiability, as usual. Models, models, and more models. Most can't even predict current conditions, which Koonin points out. No one has any way of gaining experimental data to verify the models. But they have plenty of tweaks to make the models match current observations, which then put the models at odds with other observations and with themselves. Garbage science.
Red/blue panels have been organized including one by APS in 2014 that experts with varied perspectives and non-experts were part of - there has been comprehensive responses by others besides Ben. Here Andy Lacis a NASA-GISS shares response at http://rabett.blogspot.com/2015/04/andy-lacis-writes-to-steve-koonin.html that is worth reading to dig into the rigor with which climate scientist have built their case for climate action on observations and modeling over the past several decades.
observations and modeling over the past several decades.
5/30/2021 6:04 PM
One of the problems with climate science is that the observations have have a very limited time scale. Much of the data is only 50 years old. The older data is taken with different methods and become increasing more uncertain. It would seems like it wold very hard to project anything with certainty for the next 200 years from such limited data.
Also the idea of "experts" is odd. Climate science is so new that one could argue that there are in fact no "experts" in the field, since it has not been around long enough to allow for real experts to arise as we know them in other fields. Now there are people who know more about it than others and people who have been working in it for that last 50 years but the field simply is not mature enough to say that we really understand climate science at an expert level.
"dig into the rigor with which climate scientist have built their case for climate action on observations and modeling over the past several decades."
Well this is kind of the issue is it not. Any time scientists from outside of the field "dig" into the rigor of what is done they become concerned with what they see.
Again climate science is built on numerous other fields including physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, among others. When they start using relations from physics outside of the regions where such relations can be used than you have a problem.
I am not saying climate science is religion. I do not believe that but also think it should be able to address what I see as real issues with the field, which are going to be issues faced by all emerging fields of science. If you want people to trust what you are doing you need to be able to defend it in public forums, science forums, and with other fields of science. Bens letter cam across as very off-putting to me and counter to the scientific method, he does no favor to his field of research. I will assume that this just an issue with Ben and not with the field. In the conversations with the scientists I know who are familiar with the letter they all disagree with the idea of stopping the talk.
Anyone with a high school education in earth science knows that "climate change" is real. The climate is constantly changing. Influenced over the millennia by things outside of our control (solar cycles, etc.) and some things within our control. The contribution of each is being studied. It is also a political football that has been tossed around for over four decades. The real issue is that the US population is getting dumber. The scientific method is "boring". The Socratic method is not used in schools. It is in fact discouraged as it is seen as aggressive and therefore harmful to students. Critical thinking has been replaced by memorization of "facts" provided to the students.
As a Scientific institution, we should AT MINIMUM encourage scientific debate.
Einstein questioned the Cophenhagen quantum interpretation a century ago (likely considering it junk science) - Data proved it otherwise. The foundations of climate science laid 25 years ago are also solid and being validated by observations. While it is complex and system the drivers, feedbacks and signal/noise have been dissected and ae solid. Calling it junk science is inappropriate and inaccurate factually and like quantum theory climate science will continue to gain deeper knowledge of our living planet. Unfortunately there is a lot of at stake and we need to take responsible actions now even in the light of uncertainties.
Physics of Climate Change - a very clear talk by a physicist at Case Western - captures the basics for the public - a lot more has been done - but the gist is clear. Please do watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEoe6YdUeAE
5/31/2021 6:24 AM
???
Oh God I do not even know where to start with this. Why...why do you do this to us.
You do not understand what Einstein actually said. He never called quantum physics junk science. He never questioned the data. In fact much of his work also contributed to quantum mechanics, such as the photo-electric effect, Bose-Einstein statistics and EPR. He had questions about the implications of the data and if there could be a deeper theory (an on going endeavor in fact). His thought experiments where also very valuable for showing what the implications of quantum mechanics are.
What on earth does the rise of quantum mechanics have to do with climate science? Sure there are lots of fields that started off with skeptics but then over time became accepted. Part of that acceptance was that they had to have stand up to the critiques and challenges. There is also the large number of fields that also becomes increasing refined over time to correct for point that had been raised by critics. Of course there are plenty of fields and theories that started off as seeming correct that after many years turned out to be incomplete or out and out false. Cherry picking theories like quantum mechanics and saying this is how science works is incorrect as there are plenty of other theories that did not turn out to be correct. The idea of comparing the evolution quantum mechanics to climate science makes no sense anyway. QM was developed from the observations of very well controlled repeatable experiments with very few parameters. For example much of basic of QM arises from studying Hydrogen or individual electrons. In many ways the ingredients for QM is much simpler than anything studied in Climate science. In QM you can measure things very precisely in a lab over and over. In Climate science you cannot do this. These are very different ways of doing science.
"While it is complex and system the drivers, feedbacks and signal/noise have been dissected and ae solid."
What does dissected and solid mean? As you pointed out that these systems are very complex, and right now we do not really have a
reliable way to predict how complex systems actually behave. We cannot make a model and run experiments on the
the earth for 500 years and do this for thousands of times to test the predictions or refine our models. This
"The foundations of climate science laid 25 years ago are also solid and being validated by observations."
Just how solid are they? The foundations of climate science are also laid out by physics, applied math, and computational science.
A good question to ask is just how well do climate scientists really understand this, particularly the mathematics that goes into their models. Also is their work really being validated by observations? Remember (hide the decline!!!), just how good have their predictions been so far?
"like quantum theory climate science will continue to gain deeper knowledge of our living planet."
I cannot figure out what this even means. How does QM give deep knowledge to our living planet?
Ok maybe I am being trolled by some climate denier nut pretending to be a climate scientists to make them look bad. If so you got me.
I am going to assume you are a troll because it would make feel better about humanity than if you are actually serious.
5/31/2021 1:24 PM
That guy makes a bunch of assumptions that are either not proven or simply leaving out a bunch of other possible effects that could be relevant. It seems more like the simple calculations for a actual greenhouse but again the earth is way more complex than that. In other words there are probably many more terms that may seem small so they are ignored in these simplistic approaches but could very important at later times. These kind of effects come up time and time again in complex systems. Anybody who studies these systems knows this.
5/31/2021 9:22 PM
Excellent post/response. He unfortunately is not a troll.
Excellent post/response. He unfortunately is not a troll.
6/01/2021 5:29 PM
I keep seeing this argument that goes like this.Some people did not believe in quantum mechanics at first but it turned out to be right, therefore every new theory that has have some doubters must also be true.
Besides being a logical fallacy this is not even what happened with quantum mechanics. Sure lots of people had issues with the implications of quantum mechanics especially in terms of determinism but no one was denying the experimental observations. People where not saying that the hydrogen spectra lines are fake or that the Stern Gerlach results are wrong. To this day you still have people working on interpretations of quantum mechanics. Things like is the wave function real, consistent histories, Bohmian mechanics, and even the many worlds interpretation.
Koonin chaired an APS red/blue panel with experts and non-experts in 2014 to revise its statement on climate. He failed to change that and resigned. He followed up with red/blue repeat for Trump with Happer that failed too. He does not have any credibility in the climate science community and the book and media are his way out. to exert influence. Yes he is accomplished non-expert in his field. I would like him, to debate Stephen Chu another non-expert but a much better informed physicist who understands climate science.
"Yes he is accomplished non-expert in his field."
What does that even mean?
"debate Stephen Chu another non-expert but a much better informed physicist who understands climate science. "
I think you are the same person who keeps saying Koonin does not have a degree in climate science so he has no expertise. Well guess what Chu does not have a degree in climate science so how is he better informed? I think Chu just agrees with your opinion more so that must make him better informed in your mind. With your approach Chu should not have any weight in the climate science community either.
On the face value I would probably lend more weight to Koonin since his background is in computational modeling and computational physics. Chu has a background in experimental optical physics. Perhaps Chu does know more but just from their actual scientific backgrounds I would have lean toward Koonin having more insight into issues with climate science.
What is not recognized by many is that the climate science is built around observations and this has had a very rich and creative history starting with Charle's Keeling and expanded significantly with Ben's attribution. It is not computationally centric that must be stressed to all.
6/02/2021 4:26 PM
BS. It is built around adjusting models to try to match spotty and inconsistent "observations." It lacks one crucial aspect of "science": Experiment to confirm theory.
What is not recognized by many is that the climate science is built around observations and this has had a very rich and creative history starting with Charle's Keeling and expanded significantly with Ben's attribution. It is not computationally centric that must be stressed to all.
6/02/2021 4:26 PM
You have to be careful with this. In terms of observations the first one that they really noticed is the increase in CO2. They have pretty good numbers gong back 70 years and that growth is on solid footing. Now the question as to what is causing the rise is a bit open but burning lost of fossil fuel seems like a strong candidate but still not exactly certain. It could be some other human thing
as well like plastic killing plankton , large scale farming, or maybe Dodo birds got rid of C02 by some complex method we do not understand. There is also still the possibility that it is arising due some other natural effect like solar cycles, maybe we are going through a dark matter cloud or something we just have not understood yet.
The other observations are like polar ice caps melting, forest growth or glaciers shrinking is based on short time data and it is not clear what exactly they mean. The "global temperatures" show some trends but again have large fluctuations. I and many others would argue that as far as weather there is no effects that you can point to in the last 40 years that you can say is a definitive observation of the effects of climate change. Every time a hurricane hits Florida does not count as proof. We simply do have enough precise knowledge of the past weather for hundred or thousands of years to make any kind of strong case that the weather today is somehow altered from the past due to climate change. Saying there is fires in California doe not cut it, since there is plenty of evidence of much larger evidence of fire in Californias past. Saying we have had category 5 hurricanes now is sort of pointless since we had now idea how many category 5 huricanes we had 500 years ago.
In other words the observational data is not as strong or nearly as certain as you claim. This is on top of the fact that they have to as you say "creative" measures of the data make arguments. In other other words they have to make some assumptions about the data using relations from physics, chemistry, and statistics and I think they often do not understand this very well but think that they do.
The next thing to try and figure out if the CO2 will give rise to warming and how much. Now the things get really complicated. Sure C02 helps with greenhouses but the earth is not a greenhouse. This is where the computational modeling comes. If you look at history of climate change claims they really got going after they could start doing the large computational modeling.
Now I do not doubt Ben is a good scientist and all that but he has to look at complex data, make assumptions about that data and find evidence for fingerprints, but he and others cannot do controlled experiments on this. One has to worry that they need to find fingerprints so they will find fingerprints.
Integrated data-model-ML to advance climate science - constructive new article in PHYSICS TODAY https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.4772
SciAm published a criticism of the book by Koonin. It was by 12 authors. I have to admit I have never seen an article like this in SciAm nor have I ever seen scientists write like this. It reads like article one would see Huffington post not something you would ever see in SciAm. I am rather shocked that scientists would write such a thing.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/that-obama-scientist-climate-skeptic-youve-been-hearing-about/
Steve Koonin wanted to respond but SciAm would not publish his letter. I have read the criticism and Koonins response. He claims they are not being honest about what he says. The SciAm seems to be lots of insults and innuendo, much of it irrelevant to the science. Koonins
response was posted on a website linked below.
Steve Koonin responds to an article in SciAm
SciAm rejected to publish the following response by Dr S. Koonin
Koonin responds to a Scientific American article by Oreskes et al.
https://motls.blogspot.com/2021/06/steve-koonin-responds-to-article-in.html
Scientific American has published a criticism of me and my recent book, Unsettled. Most of that article’s 1,000 words are scurrilous ad hominem and guilt-by-association aspersions from the twelve co-authors. Only three scientific criticisms are buried within their spluttering; here is my response to each them.
When the debate disappears from science, the science is sure to follow it out the door.
In defense of rigor in climate science and lack of in the non experts' understanding https://greatwhitecon.info/2021/05/unsettling-koonin-critiques-continue/
"In defense of rigor in climate science and lack of in the non experts' understanding https://greatwhitecon.info/2021/05/unsettling-koonin-critiques-continue/ "
I went to that site. What on earth was that? It looks like 3rd grade ramblings. It is just clownish the way it comes across. Time and time again the Koonin critics do not address the actual point raised. Instead you keep getting this argument that he does not have a degree in climate science, he worked for BP, he is this or that.
I find that saying Koonin is not an expert is ironic since climate scientists use physics, applied math, computer modeling, complexity and statistics yet in my dealings with them they often do not really understand even the basic science behind these fields. For example when it comes to statistics they do not understand distributions and rare events, Black swan events, or fat tails. This is a property that arises in complex systems particularly systems out of equilibrium. One example is economics where time and time again economists have failed to get this point which leads to all sorts of problems. To be fair it is a hard problem as rare events statistics is not easy to grasp. There are many cases where Gaussian statistics works however once you are in a non-equilibrium situation things can be very different. I have had conversations with some climate modelers who are in fact dealing with non-equilibrium systems and they simply do not get this point. One of the big issues I have with this field is they often use equilibrium relations in their studies since these are often well defined and there is lots of tools from this approach however this is going to be rather limited in understanding and predicting non-equilibrium systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan:_The_Impact_of_the_Highly_Improbable
Here is an independent analysis of climate records by a group of Berkeley physicist that affirmed climate experts findings http://berkeleyearth.org/archive/summary-of-findings - They published it in peer review journals
http://berkeleyearth.org/archive/summary-of-findings
This is the same physicists (Muller) that just put out a report that Covid was engineered from the Wuhan Lab
https://nypost.com/2021/06/06/damning-science-shows-covid-19-likely-engineered-in-lab/
He seems to be a tad bit of a crack pot, but who know maybe climate change is real and maybe covid-19 was created in the Wuhan lab.
The Berkley work was looking to see if warming was occurring. Rising CO2 and warming are on pretty solid ground however that is not the issue raised by Koonin who has acknowledged both effects. The issue is how accurately can we model the future warming and if decisions about ecommics should be so politicalized.
Koonin is no different than Muller they both are taking an independent look at climate data and modeling and as Muller did will recognize that the experts recognize and have addressed the nuances and uncertainties over many decades. The scientific method works and hope Koonin follows the same path and writes peer reviewed papers or critiques and draws defensible conclusions rather than write w all street journals, popular books and pump up his volume on right wing TV media.
" writes peer reviewed papers or critiques"
It is kind of apparent that you are not very familiar with the "peer review" process or publication. Just because something is peer reviewed does not make it true. You also have to remember who is "peer" reviewing these papers, fields of research can become toxic, or corrupted. The biggest corruptor is of course politics, but others can come into play like religion, money and so on. Do you actually think that if Koonin analyzed some data and came to the "wrong" conclusion that potential climate science referees would ever let that through? If you do not believe me just ask yourself why they do not even want him to speak. Suppose he did get something published in a journal, I can tell you exactly what would happen, there would a letter writing campaign to boycott the journal from now on, unless the paper is withdrawn. Journal editors knows this already so there is simply no way Koonin is going to be able to publish something in any kind of journal they would acknowledge as legitimate. Muller on the other hand came to the right conclusions so his paper can be published. Speaking of "feedbacks" once this gets going, other people who study climate learn really fast to get in line or get marginalized. Other young people see very fast in graduate school how this works and simply leave this line of research since they see how much politics is involved.
How do I know this about journals?, because this has already happened in several fields [1,2]. Not to mention several professors in climate science simply leave academics because they feel the field is getting politically crazy [3]
1
https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender
2
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/transracialism-article-controversy.html
3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Curry
Curry retired in 2017 from her tenured position as a professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology at age 63, because of what she called "the poisonous nature of the scientific discussion around human-caused global warming". Michael Mann said climate science would be stronger without her because of her "confusionism and denialism"
Could you imagine a physicists saying that quantum mechanics would be stronger without him because of his denialism? The exact opposite is true.
The comments by Mann make me very leery of some of the climate science researchers since they often use language that I have never
heard in any kind of the field of hard science.
Mann is a reasonable antidote to Koonin in public and has a book out that also shows a cirque of doomism - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview
Mann is a reasonable antidote to Koonin in public and has a book out that also shows a cirque of doomism - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview
6/11/2021 11:47 AM
Mann is also repeatedly made statements that sound utterly unscientific and I could never imagine a physicists or anybody else in science would ever make. This seems to be common feature among climate scientists.
For example I simply could not imagine other scientists attempting to stifle the speech of other view points such as what has Ben done. Scientists address speech with other speech or more precisely evidence which is one of the foundations of the scientific method. Ben is closer to the Vatican trying to stop Galieo from speaking.
In any case I agree the best counter to Koonin is the book by Mann and for Mann to make give his own talks. It is not trying to ban Koonin from speaking.
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