I'm going to summarize Physicist, Caltech President, and Obama DOE appointee Steven Koonin on climate change:
1) Climate is an extremely complicated phenomenon
2) It is extremely difficult to model beyond a limited time frame.
3) The models we have, running on the most powerful, purpose built, computers rely on massive aggregations because there are otherwise too many interactions to handle. These aggregations are too large to be reasonably interpreted.
4) There is a large industry of well paid scientists, researchers, and policymakers who have built careers on Climate Change. Alarming news keeps them in a job, so they have an incentive to bias towards worst case outcomes. " It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
5. Efficient and clean technology is worthy of pursuing regardless of its climate impacts. We can do more for the planet creating market based solutions in those directions than trying to manage CO2 directly.
Finally, I must acknowledge the Yale paper and climate scientists who have criticized his work. Rather than fire from the bushes, they should debate Koonin directly. He isn't a Fox News kook, if anything his credentials are superior to theirs.
Remember, one of the oldest ruse of charlatans is promising they can change the weather.
If you're going to note his credentials as a physist & Caltech president, you should also note that he was also employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief Scientist from 2004 and 2009.
Remember, one of the oldest ruse of climate-change deniers is to equate weather and climate.
So how is that different from veing a full time job in climate change as a scientist or policy maker?
Do you believe that Koonin wants a climate catastrophe?
If a person could be so monumentally blindsided to ignore a threat that will not only harm themselves, but everyone they know and care about, then could not others be too, e.g. Climate scientists?
Another question;
Accepting Climate Change as presented by the IPCC, how do we resolve the problem of the major oil producing states like Russia and Saudi Arabia refusing to give up the oil wealth which allows them to exist as they do, and the developing world states from consuming it? Green conversions are not feasible for large segments of the world population in anu useful time frame.
The net zero policies being advocated by the G7 nations are very expensive and handwave away big problems with "batteries will get cheaper, and the tech will improve" but they fail hard if thar doesn't turn out.
If we are really concerned about CO2 driven climate change the best solution is next gen nuclear power and mitigation strategies. Make electricity so cheap that no one will want fossil fuels if they can avoid it. Yes, they just started talking about nuclear power, but it's late. James Hansen was talking about it 20 years ago, it's not a surprise.
People commonly downvote to signal disagreement, and that's not discouraged by the guidelines. There is, however, a rule against complaining about votes.
You forgot to mention that he worked for BP. And he wasn’t president of Caltech. He is also theoretical physicist who does urban engineering neither of which make him qualified on climate science.
Market based solutions won’t be enough. We are very lucky that clean electricity is cheap. But there some emissions that will never switch because of economics. Airlines are a good example, where fossil fuel will be always cheaper than green alternatives. We will have to force them by raising fossil prices with carbon tax or by banning them. Some would call the former market based but that isn’t what they mean.
1) Climate is an extremely complicated phenomenon 2) It is extremely difficult to model beyond a limited time frame. 3) The models we have, running on the most powerful, purpose built, computers rely on massive aggregations because there are otherwise too many interactions to handle. These aggregations are too large to be reasonably interpreted. 4) There is a large industry of well paid scientists, researchers, and policymakers who have built careers on Climate Change. Alarming news keeps them in a job, so they have an incentive to bias towards worst case outcomes. " It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair 5. Efficient and clean technology is worthy of pursuing regardless of its climate impacts. We can do more for the planet creating market based solutions in those directions than trying to manage CO2 directly.
Finally, I must acknowledge the Yale paper and climate scientists who have criticized his work. Rather than fire from the bushes, they should debate Koonin directly. He isn't a Fox News kook, if anything his credentials are superior to theirs.
Remember, one of the oldest ruse of charlatans is promising they can change the weather.
https://youtu.be/l90FpjPGLBE?si=6KfwkEH8HVb3GtXV