Inlägg
 |
| Steve Koonin, PhD. |
En del av er har kanske hört om fysikern Steve Koonin, som tillhör den underkommitté för American Physical Society (APS) som ska se över organisationens officiella ståndpunkt om klimathotet. Den nuvarande versionen från 2007 säger bl a:
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
Därför väckte det uppmärksamhet när Koonin för ett par veckor sedan publicerade en essä i Wall Street Journal med rubriken Climate Science is Not Settled, där han hävdade att vi förstår för lite om klimatet för att vi ska kunna vidta några åtgärder mot klimatförändringarna. Denna essä hyllades av många klimatförvillare (bl a publicerade den ledande svenska klimatförvillarbloggen en svensk översättning). Bland klimatforskare var mottagandet inte lika positivt. Benjamin Santer, specialist på att urskilja olika klimatfaktorers påverkan (detection/attribution) och en av de forskare som hördes av underkommittén, kommenterade:
Another source of real frustration is that Dr. Koonin had a real opportunity to listen. To consult experts in many different aspects of climate science. To do a deep dive into the science. To seek understanding of complex scientific issues. He did not make use of this opportunity. His op-Ed is not a deep dive - it is a superficial toe-dip into a shallow puddle, rehashing the same tired memes (the "warming hiatus" points toward fundamental model errors, climate scientists suppress uncertainties, there's a lack of transparency in the IPCC process, climate always varies naturally, etc.)
Ett mer utförligt svar har kommit från klimatforskaren Raymond Pierrehumbert i Slate med rubriken Climate Science Is Settled Enough. Pierrehumbert både påpekar rena faktafel och kommer med mer principiell kritik. Här är ett utdrag:
Science is never settled, but it can be settled enough. Newtonian mechanics was not settled science—it was overturned by both relativity and quantum mechanics. Nonetheless, it was, and continues to be, settled enough to build bridges and design airplanes. It is in this spirit that the word settled is used sometimes in connection with climate science, and not in the cartoonish sense that Koonin fabricates in his straw-man argument. It is always easy to find gaps—even very significant gaps—in the understanding of a system as complex as the climate, but the issue on the table isn’t whether our understanding is complete, but whether it is complete enough to justify the need for serious controls on carbon dioxide emissions. It’s not the situation that the range of climate predictions runs from “pretty good” to “somewhat bad”—the truth is more like “bad” to “extremely bad,” unless emissions growth is halted and eventually reversed.
