Theoretical physicist Steven Koonin went from working on climate and energy issues as a Department of Energy undersecretary under President Barack Obama to co-author of last month’s report to the agency’s current chief that concluded the threat from greenhouse gas emissions has been exaggerated.
What changed?
Koonin, 73, told me that he started to dig more deeply into climate science in 2014—and discovered that it had a “dirty underbelly.” “I started paying attention to the representation of climate science in the media and political discussions, and realized that things were just not being told straight,” he said. (If you are interested in Koonin’s take on what caused the Los Angeles fires earlier this year and what they portend, read this article by my Free Press colleague Emily Yoffe.)
The 151-page report by the Climate Working Group signals a 180-degree shift from the Biden administration’s climate focus, opening the aperture to theories and findings that might send Greta Thunberg into a coma. For example, the report said that the growing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “has the important positive effect of promoting plant growth,” that much of the debate about the consequences of ocean acidification “has been one-sided and exaggerated,” and that U.S. corn yields haven’t been hurt by rising temperatures, as many studies have claimed.
Last week, two environmental groups sued the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency over the report, alleging that Koonin and his four co-authors sought to “manufacture” a reason to deny the root causes of global warming and were recruited in secret.
So is climate change real? And what will the conversations and scientific research about climate science look like by the time President Donald Trump leaves the White House? Here are some of Koonin’s answers, lightly edited for clarity.
