Obama-era scientist: UN climate report will cause economic destruction
A former scientist for the Obama administration criticized the conclusions of a new U.N. climate report in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation, arguing it would lead to “great economic destruction.”
“The report itself is … not bad,” Dr. Steven Koonin, former undersecretary of energy for science, told the DCNF Thursday morning. The report’s Summary for Policymakers and subsequent retelling by the media is where it “gets destroyed,” Koonin said.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, written by 234 scientists throughout the world, a “code red for humanity.”
To Koonin, the report’s excessive “credence to models” means there is too much uncertainty to implement policies he feels will wreak havoc on the economy.
He also said the report’s sweeping conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt, as they fail to address historical climate trends.
“If it happened in the past, when human influence (was) small, you’ve got to explain why that’s not what’s happening,” he said.
The report noted that heat waves that previously appeared once every 50 years now occur almost 5 times as often.
Koonin said, however, that there are a number of ways to make any changes in the temperature look “more dramatic” than they are.
In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday, Koonin noted how the summary of a 2017 U.S. government climate report highlighted the rise of heat waves across the country since 1960, but left out the part of the report stating heat waves were no less common in 1900.
“Knowledgeable independent scientists need to scrutinize the latest U.N. report because of the major societal and economic disruptions that would take place on the way to a ‘net zero’ world, including the elimination of fossil-fueled electricity, transportation and heat, as well as complete transformation of agricultural methods,” he wrote in the WSJ.
Koonin began to doubt the scientific consensus surrounding climate change after leaving the Obama administration in 2011, Inside Climate News reported. He was later tasked by the Trump administration to recruit participants for an “adversarial” review of the issue, Scientific American reported.
Other scientists criticized his arguments questioning the uniqueness of modern climate events, such as physicist Raymond Pierrehumbert.
“He claims that the rate of sea level rise now is no greater than it was early in the 20th century, but this is a conclusion one could draw only through the most shameless cherry-picking,” Pierrehumbert said in a 2014 Slate article.
Koonin said the world should be “paying attention” to rising temperatures, but argued any approach to solving the problem has to strike a “balance.”
He said that if the world wants to move toward a reality where there are zero carbon emissions, it has to be at a slower pace than what is currently being proposed.
“If you do it too fast, you cause great economic destruction,” Koonin told the DCNF.
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asemaphore-CSRinfluencers
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About the sea-level rise, I am not sure that Maylasia who had to move its capital would agree that it “is not worse than what happened in the 20th century”. I understand that one must cautious with models, but I think we can all agree if we don’t act now, humanity is at risk.
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Andy
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Malaysia’s capital moving seems to be a political move, and was planned back in the 1980s. This article is about when and why capital cities were moved in Asia – https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/A-short-history-of-relocating-capitals-in-Asia
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Andy
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I would also disagree that we need to act now. That is only needed if you accept without question what the alarmists tell you. If you’d care to read the other articles about the IPCC report, including mine from yesterday, you’ll see how full of holes their ‘science’ is.
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Peter F Gill
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No Asemaphore-CSRinfluencers we can not all agree that humanity is at risk from what you understand is human influenced climate change nor do we all agree that taking a series of wrong and extremely expensive measures based on a series of wrong assumptions is either sensible or necessary. It is a great pity that the normal self correcting mechanisms of the scientific method are in jeopardy because of the intense politicisation of the subject which do not allow a proper airing of challenges to what are at best a shaky set of hypotheses. Steven is right about great economic destruction in an effort (which will of course fail) to attempt zero carbon (dioxide) emissions but he has under emphasised the situation. For economies like the USA and the UK the term economic suicide better suits the case.
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Mervyn
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How many people remember when former UNFCCC head, Christiana Figueres, admitted a few years ago that the Paris Climate Accord was not about climate change but about the redistribution of economic wealth, that the United Nations was in the process of replacing the global economic system of the last 150 years (presumably capitalism), and that the only way climate change polices can be properly implemented is under the Chinese system (presumably communism)?
It all makes sense what is happening. The evidence was the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda and the ‘Big Reset’ by the world’s political and business elite… us common folk have no say..
We, the ordinary people, are the only ones who can stop this journey towards authoritarianism and the evil ideologies of environmentalism and marxism..
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Terry Shipman
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A year or so ago I typed up a WORD document that lists many comments, including the one you cite from Figueres. I then added it to my cell phone and have pulled it out several times and read off these statements to people. I then tell people that climate change is not about the climate. It’s about Marxist redistribution of wealth & political control. That way it’s not just my opinion. It’s quoting these people in their own words.
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THOMAS W ADAMS
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There is an elephant in this room and it is called climate change, but not the one being supported by our so called Governments. For about the last one thousand years, the Earth, in it’s great celestial orbit, has arrived at the position where an “Ice Age” is always experienced, it is imminent, if not quite immediate yet, but look closely, it is here. The turbulence and ramifications of this, falling upon an unprepared World population is and will be horrendously severe. To start with; half the World population will seek to move to those lands not destined to be buried under mountains of ice, WHICH IS SOMETHING THAT OCCURS QUICKLY. And, before some one points it out, it will probably happen in this sequence; Great consternation is being created because of “Warming” type events in sectors of the Earth; these warming events will be melting established ice build-ups, this will provide the water necessary to build the new glaciers in those spaces being determined currently by mother nature; this all occurs relatively quickly, in tandem with other great changes like our magnetic core, and others. And make no mistake, this is all afoot as we argue just the “Warming” part.Chief among Earth changes is the change that is/will be occurring to out tilt, preccession, (is that spelled correctly?) No amount of human interference or economy will make one snow-flake of difference.
You will be able to understand all the ensuing human problems for your self. Amen It Is Written.
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