Steven E. Koonin has a PhD in physics from MIT. But that doesn’t stop the attacks on his climate arguments. Go read his Wikipedia page. It’s nothing but a slanderous hit piece. His impressive biography is 3 paragraphs long, but the attacks on his climate views take up the majority of the page.
Because his positions are kinda stupid if he doesn’t think CO2 makes a difference …
The standard 2 questions follow from your post :
1) Who told you that ?
2) Why did you just “blindly believe” them, without any verification / checking / confirmation / etc. on your part ?!?
Your statement about his “positions” is either badly misinformed (by others) or deliberately distorted (by you).
As it happens I’ve just finished reading his “Unsettled” book.
NB : That means that I have checked for myself what he actually wrote in it.
In a section headed “Where I’m coming from” you will find (on page 4) :
Here’s what I have discovered :
– Humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate.
Your “interpretation” of that is “he doesn’t think CO2 makes a difference” … which says more about your English comprehension skills than anything else …
– – – – –
… and it sounds like he has big oil links
Someone with “big oil links” says “2 + 2 = 4”.
Quentin Walker : Mathematicians ! You have to rewrite the laws of integer arithmetic, because “someone with big oil links” said “2 + 2 = 4” ! ! !
Someone with “big oil links” says “E = mc²”.
Quentin Walker : Physicists ! You have to come up with an alternative to Special Relativity, because “someone with big oil links” said “E = mc²” ! ! !
– – – – –
[ Version 2 ]
Quentin Walker : “… and it sounds like he has big oil links”
Mark BLR : “So f**king what ? That has exactly the same relevance as your Greenpeace / FotE / WWF / Sierra Club (/ …) links.”
Mark: Almost lawyerly, you fixed Quentin’s comment.
FWIW: Within the first 3 minutes of this interview, I recall he proffered that CO2 increase by man has an influence on temperature.
Quentin is not the kind of person with whom it’s possible to have a rational dialogue.
Doc Chuck
February 12, 2022 11:23 pm
Greenhouse gasses does it* I tells ya’ and the accessible solution is to rapidly build up a replacement electrical energy infra-structure to avoid fossil fuel use via the necessary further increased employment of just such fueled machinery in the construction, installation, servicing, and eventual successive re-installment in smelted steel, aluminum, copper, and cobalt; lithium and hydrocarbon feed-stock plastics the much desired means for wind and sun harvested electricity (which must also rely on that former machinery to meet shortfalls in a temporally quite variable harvest). Whatever you do, don’t apply any numeracy to that whole enterprise or it’ll never sell. And just ignore that the propelling it* problem’s apparently ‘alarming’ proportions are a special feature of massaged model surmises disconnected from our own experience over a lifetime. Oh yeah, sign me up!
Sorry gents, no obfuscation intended — just an overview portraying the systematically obscured self-refutation of a widely promoted solution’s necessary reliance upon just what is meanwhile claimed to be eschewed.
Nor any intent, Paul, to insert the Nazi surface fleet (which was largely bottled up by the Royal Navy in Baltic ports/Norwegian fjords) into the Pearl Harbor raid undertaken by their tripartite Japanese ally under command of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (who had even attended Harvard University 2 decades earlier). Though few realize that exactly 6 months later so many of those same best of Japanese naval pilots (that had just shot down 19 of 20 attacking American torpedo planes) were themselves incinerated while their planes were being refueled on the decks of the same 4 combined-fleet carriers as they were finally successfully dive-bombed to flaming destruction by planes from the 2 defending American aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway, utterly changing the prospects for the outcome of a war over such a large expanse of Pacific Ocean. Anyway, since you brought it up, just sayin’.
Doc [up]-Chuck’s comment is evidence of self implosion. Words leaked out of his brain, to a keyboard in random incoherent thoughts like a stream of unconsciousness.
I still think it’s funny that Rogan is a dope smoking Bernie Bro…not that smoking dope matters, but he checks many of the left’s boxes. For some reason they need the mRNA shot to be called a “safe and effective vaccine” and there can be no therapies for Covid. Don’t believe your logic and trust their science.
I hear there is solid evidence that the vax shots do what many of us knew they would do. That is, distract and overuse the immune system and therefore weaken it.
Inject mRNA vax
Human response to vax causes cells to manufacture spike proteins
Spike proteins are very poison (this is a whole other topic), and must be destroyed
Immune system responds by making specific antibodies to destroy the newly manufactured poisonous proteins
Viscous cycle of creation of poison in the body and the attempted removal of poison taxes immune system.
The so-called collateral damage, however, is supposed to be the derived benefit of attacking a single (spike) protein of the original variant of CoV2 virus.
Human body is in a constant state of immune depletion
Meanwhile, Virus mutations (that do not require that spike protein) survive and leak around the vax
New variant is born.
Taking boosters amplifies the above to almost ad radiculitis.
There is no way in hell I would take this vax, which is not a vaccine by the past definition of a vaccine.
It’s 2 hours long- just started it now. Funny, but I never heard of Joe Rogan a year ago- now I’ve watched many of his shows and he’s now a big deal in America and I can see why. A good combination of manliness (hated by the PC types) and smarts. Not Ivy League intellectual smarts but street smarts.
Just finished the full video. Nothing there that the regulars here aren’t familiar with- but I bet that most of Joe Rogan’s fans will learn a lot from Koonin. I read somewhere that more people watch Rogan than the total of the 10 most popular people on cable news.
…which is why he’s a problem to the left. His audience is somewhere north of 50-million while CNN struggles to pull in 5-million at any given time. He’s a loose cannon in the media sphere with no fealty to the Progressive agenda. Which is why they need to stop him.
Or cnn’s combine weekly ratings. Thats not hard to do, Clay&Buck have a bigger audience for their 3 hours daily than cnn has for all their programs combined.
It’s the Streisand effect… DON’T take pictures of my house. What house? Let me see.
Sean
February 13, 2022 3:41 am
Koonan’s timing for his book could not have been better considering the events of the last 6 months in energy markets. China tried to cut carbon dioxide by fiat then decided that energy security was more important CO2 emissions. The biggest emitter was a no show at COP26. India put conditions in place saying economic growth took precedence over CO2 cutbacks unless the west paid the cost of renewables.
The Europeans suffered huge price shocks do to reliance on renewables and then having to go to the global market for fossil fuels when demand was very high. The last 6 months was when the bills showed up for poor energy policy based on green fantasy.
It was also the time when the working class has decided that they’d had enough of arrogant elites making rules micromanaging their lives into a ditch. Koonan is much more of an energy expert than climate expert but he likely knows much more about climate than the green advocates will ever know about energy.
He is rational. That is why they hate him. They have to have fear, or else people will not willingly give them control over the world’s economies.
This has NOTHING to do with the climate.
It has to do with control over the public.
And anyone that threatens that, will feel the wrath of the Left.
Bad people with bad ideas will not debate. The will attack, to silence debate.
Into the Red: How the Globe will cover climate change
To report on the most pressing issue of our time, the Globe’s climate team is expanding and rethinking its coverage.
“We won’t debate the reality of climate change or its cause. That debate is settled.”
I guess they didn’t read Koonin’s book. I posted a comment mentioning Rogan talking with Koonin and a link to the Spotify podcast. It’ll probably be deleted.
Notice how leftards always proclaim the debate settled as soon as they start losing. Hands over ears and chanting Naanaanaanaa is the sum total of their debate.
Craig W
February 13, 2022 8:02 am
Great interview. I’m glad Koonin is allowed voice, Rogan too.
Political Science is unsettling.
In America, everyone is allowed voice. It’s guaranteed. In fact, using the word “allowed” is incorrect as it suggests that government somehow has dominion over speech when actually, its none of their business.
That’s the trouble with woke people. They think they can establish value judgements on conversation and get the government to enforce it. When questioned, they claim moral highground, when in fact their whole idea is immoral at face value.
2hotel9
February 13, 2022 8:29 am
It is hi-larious that the left is attacking their boy Rogan, nearly as hi-larious as the right clamoring support for Bernie Boy Rogan. The logical dissonance in this is quite comical.
And yes! I coined a new phrase there, logical dissonance. Feel free to use it wherever appropriate.
Rick C
February 13, 2022 10:02 am
The interview was pretty good, but Koonan kinda whiffed on his answer about which gases are GHG’s. He only talked about CO2 and CH4 and never mentioned water vapor. Maybe Rogan should try and get Will Happer on.
As I understand it…. Earth is definitely not a greenhouse, and therefore is not influenced by the greenhouse effect. Adding what we call greenhouse gases – water vapor constitutes 95+%; CO2, Methane and other trace gases make up the rest – to Earth’s atmosphere does not make Earth atmosphere act like a greenhouse. The term “greenhouse” was originally used because it is the best lay term to try to explain the beneficial warming effect those gases have on Earth. Earth’s warming mechanism is not exactly a “greenhouse” effect. It is much more complex than that. I think Venus was tagged with the greenhouse effect label long before Earth’s such labeling. Venus isn’t a greenhouse either – No Glass Ceiling to trap heat.
I hope this doesn’t open another can of worms discussion about the complexities of how Earth’s atmosphere helps keep us desirably warm. But think, if we could successfully drop the ill-fitting phrase “greenhouse gases” from our lexicon altogether, it would make Alarmist heads explode.
I liked Happer’s explanation of how climate and greenhouse gases work. There’s just a lot we don’t know, and I think that is what the alarmists exploit to gin up fear of what could possibly happen. I saw another good video of The guy from MIT and another climate scientist debating the uncertainties etc. The other guy had some good points about the possibilities of effects that are unknown yet, which could be attributed to changes in climate that were caused by humans. The problem is we still don’t know what they are or how they are affected.
Icepilot
February 13, 2022 3:18 pm
I joined Spotify to support Joe Rogan, which was perfect timing.
The Koonin interview is excellent!
Koonin believes that GHGs exist. Many skeptics do not. I am one of them. I’m not a scientist, but I’m fairly certain that the notion of GHGs has been falsified.
I would state it this way, Karim: the popular notion of “greenhouse gases”, being IR-interactive gases such as water vapour, methane, CO2, etc, do exist. However, the effect they have on surface temperatures has nothing to do with “downwelling longwave infrared radiation”, which does not exist (other than from the Sun, in relatively small amounts compared to other wavelengths), and therefore these IR-active gases do not create a “greenhouse” (the glass versions of which do not work by altering IR radiant energy flows anyway). I’m pretty sure that’s what you meant 🙂
Justin McCarthy
February 14, 2022 7:21 pm
Read Dr. Koonin’s book. Much needed discussion. Just watched the interview. Was impressed with how prepared Joe Rogan was from a lay perspective. Asked some good questions to move the interview along. Hope it exposes the book “Unsettled” to a wider audience. It would be interesting see some other folks like Judith Curry on the podcast to discuss her perspectives.
I listened to it in full yesterday. Well worth the time.
Yes, I just listened to the whole thing, available for free without having to create an account. Excellent stuff.
Steven E. Koonin has a PhD in physics from MIT. But that doesn’t stop the attacks on his climate arguments. Go read his Wikipedia page. It’s nothing but a slanderous hit piece. His impressive biography is 3 paragraphs long, but the attacks on his climate views take up the majority of the page.
Because his positions are kinda stupid if he doesn’t think CO2 makes a difference, and it sounds like he has big oil links.
The standard 2 questions follow from your post :
1) Who told you that ?
2) Why did you just “blindly believe” them, without any verification / checking / confirmation / etc. on your part ?!?
Your statement about his “positions” is either badly misinformed (by others) or deliberately distorted (by you).
As it happens I’ve just finished reading his “Unsettled” book.
NB : That means that I have checked for myself what he actually wrote in it.
In a section headed “Where I’m coming from” you will find (on page 4) :
Your “interpretation” of that is “he doesn’t think CO2 makes a difference” … which says more about your English comprehension skills than anything else …
– – – – –
Someone with “big oil links” says “2 + 2 = 4”.
Quentin Walker : Mathematicians ! You have to rewrite the laws of integer arithmetic, because “someone with big oil links” said “2 + 2 = 4” ! ! !
Someone with “big oil links” says “E = mc²”.
Quentin Walker : Physicists ! You have to come up with an alternative to Special Relativity, because “someone with big oil links” said “E = mc²” ! ! !
– – – – –
[ Version 2 ]
Quentin Walker : “… and it sounds like he has big oil links”
Mark BLR : “So f**king what ? That has exactly the same relevance as your Greenpeace / FotE / WWF / Sierra Club (/ …) links.”
Mark: Almost lawyerly, you fixed Quentin’s comment.
FWIW: Within the first 3 minutes of this interview, I recall he proffered that CO2 increase by man has an influence on temperature.
Quentin is not the kind of person with whom it’s possible to have a rational dialogue.
Greenhouse gasses does it* I tells ya’ and the accessible solution is to rapidly build up a replacement electrical energy infra-structure to avoid fossil fuel use via the necessary further increased employment of just such fueled machinery in the construction, installation, servicing, and eventual successive re-installment in smelted steel, aluminum, copper, and cobalt; lithium and hydrocarbon feed-stock plastics the much desired means for wind and sun harvested electricity (which must also rely on that former machinery to meet shortfalls in a temporally quite variable harvest). Whatever you do, don’t apply any numeracy to that whole enterprise or it’ll never sell. And just ignore that the propelling it* problem’s apparently ‘alarming’ proportions are a special feature of massaged model surmises disconnected from our own experience over a lifetime. Oh yeah, sign me up!
Huh?
He’s rolling, dude.
“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”
“(Germans?) (Forget it, he’s rolling.)
Sorry gents, no obfuscation intended — just an overview portraying the systematically obscured self-refutation of a widely promoted solution’s necessary reliance upon just what is meanwhile claimed to be eschewed.
Nor any intent, Paul, to insert the Nazi surface fleet (which was largely bottled up by the Royal Navy in Baltic ports/Norwegian fjords) into the Pearl Harbor raid undertaken by their tripartite Japanese ally under command of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (who had even attended Harvard University 2 decades earlier). Though few realize that exactly 6 months later so many of those same best of Japanese naval pilots (that had just shot down 19 of 20 attacking American torpedo planes) were themselves incinerated while their planes were being refueled on the decks of the same 4 combined-fleet carriers as they were finally successfully dive-bombed to flaming destruction by planes from the 2 defending American aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway, utterly changing the prospects for the outcome of a war over such a large expanse of Pacific Ocean. Anyway, since you brought it up, just sayin’.
Doc [up]-Chuck’s comment is evidence of self implosion. Words leaked out of his brain, to a keyboard in random incoherent thoughts like a stream of unconsciousness.
Another melt down for the alarmists!
First they ignore you…
Which climate scientist would debate Koonin on a podcast?
Mickey Mann wouldn’t have the balls to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
He can’t. The left can’t have a debate.
I still think it’s funny that Rogan is a dope smoking Bernie Bro…not that smoking dope matters, but he checks many of the left’s boxes. For some reason they need the mRNA shot to be called a “safe and effective vaccine” and there can be no therapies for Covid. Don’t believe your logic and trust their science.
I’ll skip all their shots and just continue taking hydroxychloroquine, thank you very much.
It will be interesting to see when this pandemic ends whether people will still need a monthly boost, quarterly, yearly or it’s stopped altogether.
Since I don’t do flu shots it makes no difference to me. 😉 Will be fun laughing at people, though.
I hear there is solid evidence that the vax shots do what many of us knew they would do. That is, distract and overuse the immune system and therefore weaken it.
Taking boosters amplifies the above to almost ad radiculitis.
There is no way in hell I would take this vax, which is not a vaccine by the past definition of a vaccine.
It’s 2 hours long- just started it now. Funny, but I never heard of Joe Rogan a year ago- now I’ve watched many of his shows and he’s now a big deal in America and I can see why. A good combination of manliness (hated by the PC types) and smarts. Not Ivy League intellectual smarts but street smarts.
Just finished the full video. Nothing there that the regulars here aren’t familiar with- but I bet that most of Joe Rogan’s fans will learn a lot from Koonin. I read somewhere that more people watch Rogan than the total of the 10 most popular people on cable news.
…which is why he’s a problem to the left. His audience is somewhere north of 50-million while CNN struggles to pull in 5-million at any given time. He’s a loose cannon in the media sphere with no fealty to the Progressive agenda. Which is why they need to stop him.
Or cnn’s combine weekly ratings. Thats not hard to do, Clay&Buck have a bigger audience for their 3 hours daily than cnn has for all their programs combined.
It’s the Streisand effect… DON’T take pictures of my house. What house? Let me see.
Koonan’s timing for his book could not have been better considering the events of the last 6 months in energy markets. China tried to cut carbon dioxide by fiat then decided that energy security was more important CO2 emissions. The biggest emitter was a no show at COP26. India put conditions in place saying economic growth took precedence over CO2 cutbacks unless the west paid the cost of renewables.
The Europeans suffered huge price shocks do to reliance on renewables and then having to go to the global market for fossil fuels when demand was very high. The last 6 months was when the bills showed up for poor energy policy based on green fantasy.
It was also the time when the working class has decided that they’d had enough of arrogant elites making rules micromanaging their lives into a ditch. Koonan is much more of an energy expert than climate expert but he likely knows much more about climate than the green advocates will ever know about energy.
He is rational. That is why they hate him. They have to have fear, or else people will not willingly give them control over the world’s economies.
This has NOTHING to do with the climate.
It has to do with control over the public.
And anyone that threatens that, will feel the wrath of the Left.
Bad people with bad ideas will not debate. The will attack, to silence debate.
– The Birth of Truckistan and Dieseldorf-
Benny: The birth of “Truckistan” | The Benny Report on Newsmax- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYMLqEgtfrg
A 42-minute version of his views presented in London last November:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tz1MiX1p5I
Agreed, very well worth listening to for anyone interested! Wonder how the alarmists will spin this one, it’s going to be tough.
In today’s Boston Globe- an update of an article from January.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/01/20/science/into-red-how-globe-will-cover-climate-change/
“We won’t debate the reality of climate change or its cause. That debate is settled.”
I guess they didn’t read Koonin’s book. I posted a comment mentioning Rogan talking with Koonin and a link to the Spotify podcast. It’ll probably be deleted.
Notice how leftards always proclaim the debate settled as soon as they start losing. Hands over ears and chanting Naanaanaanaa is the sum total of their debate.
Great interview. I’m glad Koonin is allowed voice, Rogan too.
Political Science is unsettling.
In America, everyone is allowed voice. It’s guaranteed. In fact, using the word “allowed” is incorrect as it suggests that government somehow has dominion over speech when actually, its none of their business.
That’s the trouble with woke people. They think they can establish value judgements on conversation and get the government to enforce it. When questioned, they claim moral highground, when in fact their whole idea is immoral at face value.
It is hi-larious that the left is attacking their boy Rogan, nearly as hi-larious as the right clamoring support for Bernie Boy Rogan. The logical dissonance in this is quite comical.
Ahhh, someone’s feelings get trampled?
And yes! I coined a new phrase there, logical dissonance. Feel free to use it wherever appropriate.
The interview was pretty good, but Koonan kinda whiffed on his answer about which gases are GHG’s. He only talked about CO2 and CH4 and never mentioned water vapor. Maybe Rogan should try and get Will Happer on.
I usually find the question of greenhouse gases funny in relation to the earth. If the earth is a greenhouse then why is it so cold 😉
As I understand it…. Earth is definitely not a greenhouse, and therefore is not influenced by the greenhouse effect. Adding what we call greenhouse gases – water vapor constitutes 95+%; CO2, Methane and other trace gases make up the rest – to Earth’s atmosphere does not make Earth atmosphere act like a greenhouse. The term “greenhouse” was originally used because it is the best lay term to try to explain the beneficial warming effect those gases have on Earth. Earth’s warming mechanism is not exactly a “greenhouse” effect. It is much more complex than that. I think Venus was tagged with the greenhouse effect label long before Earth’s such labeling. Venus isn’t a greenhouse either – No Glass Ceiling to trap heat.
I hope this doesn’t open another can of worms discussion about the complexities of how Earth’s atmosphere helps keep us desirably warm. But think, if we could successfully drop the ill-fitting phrase “greenhouse gases” from our lexicon altogether, it would make Alarmist heads explode.
Thank you Clay.
I liked Happer’s explanation of how climate and greenhouse gases work. There’s just a lot we don’t know, and I think that is what the alarmists exploit to gin up fear of what could possibly happen. I saw another good video of The guy from MIT and another climate scientist debating the uncertainties etc. The other guy had some good points about the possibilities of effects that are unknown yet, which could be attributed to changes in climate that were caused by humans. The problem is we still don’t know what they are or how they are affected.
I joined Spotify to support Joe Rogan, which was perfect timing.
The Koonin interview is excellent!
I may have misunderstood, but is he asking for a SKEPTIC to come on and debate Steve Koonin? What would be the purpose of that?
Koonin believes that GHGs exist. Many skeptics do not. I am one of them. I’m not a scientist, but I’m fairly certain that the notion of GHGs has been falsified.
I would state it this way, Karim: the popular notion of “greenhouse gases”, being IR-interactive gases such as water vapour, methane, CO2, etc, do exist. However, the effect they have on surface temperatures has nothing to do with “downwelling longwave infrared radiation”, which does not exist (other than from the Sun, in relatively small amounts compared to other wavelengths), and therefore these IR-active gases do not create a “greenhouse” (the glass versions of which do not work by altering IR radiant energy flows anyway). I’m pretty sure that’s what you meant 🙂
Read Dr. Koonin’s book. Much needed discussion. Just watched the interview. Was impressed with how prepared Joe Rogan was from a lay perspective. Asked some good questions to move the interview along. Hope it exposes the book “Unsettled” to a wider audience. It would be interesting see some other folks like Judith Curry on the podcast to discuss her perspectives.