A summary made up using AI (based on the notes gathered here): This document is an excerpt from the book "Unsettled" by Steven E. Koonin. It covers various topics related to climate change, including the challenges of communicating the state of climate science, the relationship between emissions and concentrations of greenhouse gases, the limitations of climate models, and the impacts of human influences on the climate system. The author challenges some commonly held beliefs about the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events, wildfires, and sea level rise, arguing that the scientific evidence does not support many of the claims made in the popular media. The author encourages readers to consider the scientific evidence more carefully and to avoid overgeneralizing or misinterpreting the data.


Written by: Steven E. Koonin

Book: Unsettled

Area: #Climate #Change


Scientific American critic: A New Book Manages to Get Climate Science Badly Wrong


INTRODUCTION

Page 7: Some people argue that there's no harm in a bit of misinformation if it helps "save the planet", and indeed, when phrases like this (however unwarranted or inaccurate) are being used to describe the stakes, perhaps it isn't surprising that some climate scientists are less than objective when talking to the public.

Page 8: "It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true" —Paul Watson, CoFounder of Greenpeace

Page 14: [The topic] This enormous swath of knowledge and methods make the study of climate and energy the ultimate multidisciplinary activity. No single researcher can be an expert in more than two or three of its aspects, so the challenge in assessing and communicating the state of the science is to read widely and critically enough to put together –and convey, which requires a skill set all its own- a coherent, fact-based picture of the whole.

Page 18: The process of Science is less about collecting than it is about reducing the uncertainties in what we know.

...but this is like political commentators getting into a tizzy about one percentage point change in a poll when the poll's margin of error (its σ) is three points.

Page 24: "The earth has warmed during the past century, partly because of natural phenomena and partly in response to growing human influences. These human influences (most importantly the accumulation of CO2, from burning fossil fuels) exert a physically small effect on the complex climate system. Unfortunately, our limited observations and understanding are insufficient to usefully quantify either how the climate will respond to human influences or how it varies naturally. However, even as human influences have increased almost fivefold since 1950 and the globe has warmed modestly, most severe weather phenomena remain within past variability. Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose."


WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT WARMING

Page 27: The weather anywhere varies constantly in ways both predictable and unexpected –through the day, across days, with the seasons, and from year to year. On the other hand, a location's climate is the average of the weather over decades. In fact, the UN's World Meteorological Organization defines climate as a thirty-year average, although climate researchers will sometimes discuss averages over a period as short as ten years. So changes in the weather from one year to another do not constitute changes in climate.

Page 28: Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.