Foreword: I was sent this by email, apparently “Scientific American” doesn’t believe in fairness. I stopped subscribing to SciAm years ago because they’ve turned into a socialist cesspool of opinion, with science as an afterthought. Steve Koonin writes:
I attach a response that I submitted yesterday to Scientific American. Not surprisingly, they declined to publish it.
Please do distribute my response freely among your contacts or websites.
Steve 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.
The first criticism concerns rising temperatures:
A recent Washington Post column by conservative contributor Marc Thiessen repeats several points Koonin makes. The first is citing the 2017
National Climate Assessment to downplay rising temperatures—but the report’s very first key finding on the topic says temperatures have risen, rapidly since 1979, and are the warmest in 1,500 years.
In fact, Unsettled explicitly acknowledges a warming globe, but also the problems in comparing instrumental and proxy temperatures that weaken confidence in the “warmest in 1,500 years”. The book’s Chapter 5 criticizes in detail the 2017 report’s misleading and inaccurate representation of a different temperature metric, US extreme temperatures. To the surprise of many, the country’s warmest temperatures have not increased since 1960 and are no higher in recent years than they were in 1900.
The authors go on to offer:
The second is Thiessen quoting Koonin’s use of an outdated 2014 assessment on hurricanes to downplay climate concerns. But the newer 2017 report finds that human activity has “contributed to the observed upward trend in North Atlantic hurricane activity since the 1970s.”
In fact, Unsettled’s Chapter 6 discusses the description of hurricanes in the 2014 report, in the 2017 report, and in more recent research papers through 2020, including an authoritative 2019 assessment by eleven hurricane experts. None of those studies claim any detectable human influences on hurricanes.
Finally, we’re given:
A third point downplays sea level rise by portraying it as steady over time, cherry-picking reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the rate of sea-level rise has quadrupled since the industrial revolution, as climate scientists pointed out years ago when Koonin made this same argument.
In no sense does Unsettled portray sea level rise as “steady over time”. Rather, the book’s Chapter 8 does quite the opposite, describing the full decadal variability as portrayed in the IPCC reports and subsequent research literature, but somehow omitted in the 2017 National Climate Assessment. The IPCC statement that rates of rise between 1920 and 1950 were likely similar to those of recent decades complicates attribution of recent trends.
It is telling that these three criticisms cite Thiessen’s column rather than what I’ve written in Unsettled. That they are readily countered suggests the authors haven’t read the book or, if they have, they aren’t acting in good faith. That’s precisely the same unprofessional behavior found in the easily rebutted “fact check” of, again, a review of Unsettled, not the book itself.
To paraphrase a statement attributed to Einstein, “If I were wrong, it wouldn’t take a dozen scientists to disprove me – one would be sufficient.” As I write in Unsettled, I welcome serious, informed discussion of any of the points I raise in the book. Unfortunately, the article by Oreskes et al. falls well short of that standard.
Steven E. Koonin is the author of the bestselling book Unsettled: What climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters.
Interestingly, while Oreskes and her gang of slimers stooped really low, and SciAm even lower for not allowing a rebuttal, one climate scientist decided to ask the question on Twitter:
Steve McIntyre had the perfect response.
Peer reviewed science welcomes rebuttal, smear review, not so much.
The greatest danger posed by the left isn’t their ideas, it’s the attempt to silence all dissent. That, and their corruption of science from a rigorous system of investigation and inquiry into a religion which requires mindless acceptance of certain tropes, like catastrophic global warming, is a real danger to the advancements that we’ve made as a civilization.
It would be easier to fight if most media outlets weren’t willing collaborators. Today on NPR they discussed the failure of the media to inquire into the possibility that the Wuhan lab was the originator of the COVID-19 virus. They missed the obvious answer that the mainstream media works as a mindless horde that does little or no real inquiry into the subjects they cover, once a theme has been established by flagship organizations like NPR, WaPo and NYTimes.
What else could Oreskes do for a living? All her endeavours are hit pieces.
Koonin shows that debate is the state of climate science today. This makes alarmism an outlier.
Posted on another thread earlier today:
The notion that a warmer greener world with more rain, longer growing seasons and more arable land could be sold as the “Existential Crisis of Our Time” is testimony to the greatest propaganda triumph of all time.
The Oreskes article proves Koonin’s Unsettled was over the target. Andy May has eviscerated them here a few hours ago. Koonin holds his own, as expected.
Apparently what Oreskes and Mann simply cannot comprehend is how their shenanigans simply further expose them to ridicule outside their echo chamber.
As for SciAm, I cancelled over a decade ago when they published a Mann temperature piece that I showed false in essay Unsettling Science in ebook Blowing Smoke. SciAm had become unscientific. And after it was later sold to a German publisher, it became neither Scientific nor American—but perfect for Oreskes and her ilk.
Typical leftist projection, they are so predictable, blaming others for what they do every day, and then they use fossil fuels every day too, they are shameless, how dare they!
SciAm is a founding partner of the extreme alarmist enviro group Covering Climate Now –
https://coveringclimatenow.org/partners/partner-list/#
No surprise that Oreskes would go low with that rag, formerly a decent amateur science mag and formerly American.
SciAm became a rag 20 years ago.
Where stands Nature these days?
Twelve people publish a personal attack on a prominent physicist, whose papers have been cited 14,000 times (Google Scholar), and he is not allowed to respond in the same venue? Scientific American has lost all scientific credibility. It’s just another opinion rag, like the New York Times or the Washington Post.
What happens to a society when its main institutions have rotted out and and become fully corrupt?
I know that this might be considered ad hominem or even in the case of Hooey and Oreskes ad feminam, just to be proper and inclusive y’know, but could any of the gang of the cult of AGW = The Manns and Santers and Mckibbens,etc be such that you might want to number any of them among your friends.
It may be just me, with a set of inbuilt prejudices but they all seem to be rather unlikeable human beings for all their hand wringing and supposed concern for the welfare of the planet.
I always think of the Wormtongue character in Lord of the Rings in the context of these harbingers of doom. or even as the dementors of the harry potter tale. They exist to suck the joy out of life, and of the living.
I may be wrong and some of them may be perfectly nice warm and affable, even loveable people but I doubt it.
On the other hand were I to meet some of the skeptics I just feel that I might meet warmer human beings
Is there anyone in the church of Climatology that I might look up to and say ” what a fine scientist and human being. I might disagree but I respect you” Cant think of one offhand. Suggestions please
Anytime it takes 12 top alarmists to crit a book review, you know it is dynamite.
I waited many years so I could afford a subscription to Scientific American, but I was so disappointed by all of the Leftist politics in it that I let the subscription expire.
I couldn’t tolerate paying one more penny for it. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Scientific American stopped being anything near scientific many years ago. I remember when I first started subscribing it was full of interesting articles; many of them industrial research, and most of them based on scientific principles. Now it is mostly full of ecology drivel and climate warming nonsense. I wouldn’t recommend that magazine on anyone. It seems apparent that you have to blame climate warming at least once in your paper to even get it published.
The last paragraph of the Oreskas/Mann piece was unforgiveable, and in my inexpert opinion should be actionable, given the Mann lawsuit of Steyn for much less cause. Scientific American is well past the point of redemption, and based on this censorship of an opinion piece from Koonin, should also have to defend itself.
Scientific American has absolutely no credibility as a source of news. If they won’t allow a reply(and thus debate) they have shown clearly they can’t even obey the first rule of science. REAL science can never be settled. Ideally defamation proceedings find SA having their own reputation trashed because they have engaged in publishing pseudoscience.
The denial of Koonan’s right to be heard on published criticism (if not defamation) is but the latest episode of cancel culture. It’s hardly the first.
https://hhgpc0.wixsite.com/harde-2017-censored
Unless brought to a halt, it will not be the last. This practice will, however, destroy science by replacing intelligent discourse with propaganda.
As a “liberal,” and one who would be a “democrat,” if we still had a “democrat” party, and having followed the “liberal” groupthink on many issues in these recent years, I recognize what is going on here:
The goal of th ebook review is not to review the book.. It is to insert a pat response into the minds of the Progressive fellow travelers.
The unthinking but morally superior hordes need to be able to say “that has been debunked.”
The review is merely that.
Likewise, had a subscription for many years but it is a rag now. In the 70’s and into the 80’s it was very a high quality publication that I enjoyed a great deal. The writers and staff should go back and read some of those editions and see what real science writing should be. They would be traumatized with shame.
Five hundred years ago in Germany, Martin Luther was so confident in his arguments that he published the writings of those he wanted to refute together with his responses attached. This way there was no way to accuse him of misrepresenting them. However today, alarmists, the media and most politicians do not want to allow the public to be able to see and compare both sides because they know their case is so weak and flawed. This is also an insult to the intelligence of many ordinary people and their ability to see contradictions.
From the article: “National Climate Assessment to downplay rising temperatures—but the report’s very first key finding on the topic says temperatures have risen, rapidly since 1979, and are the warmest in 1,500 years.”
Any unmodified, regional surface temperature chart from around the world will show this is not true. They all show it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today. So the claim that the Earth is at the hottest temperature in 1,500 years is a lie. It was just as hot in the very recent past, within the written, instrument record. This occurred during the lifetimes of people who are still alive. It’s not ancient history. It’s just inconvenient for the alarmists so they pretend regional surface temperature charts don’t exist, which allows them to pretend today is the hottest in 1,500 years.
Climate Alarmism is built on Lies and Distortions.
Here’s a couple of regional surface temperature charts to demonstrate the lie:
Today is not the hottest time in the last 1,500 years in China or Australia.
These words in the very first sentence:
could well have been written for TV talking heads like Rachel Maddow.
When you claim that there is a climate change emergency when there is none to be found and you also claim that you can control the weather for 30 years in order to change climate, there is something missing in your head.
My grandmother said it was common sense.
It is a very old tactic
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”
Socrates