It would be wonderful to discover NASA scientist James Hansen's June 23, 1988 warning to the U. S. Congress about climate change, and his 2016 video "Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms [ . . .]," were wrong. I could change this fishing/climate blog into just a fishing blog. I could write about many other social justice/nonhuman issues that need attention. I could breathe more deeply, relax, sleep better. Unfortunately, each new IPCC report shows Hansen was right, and it would be wise for global leaders and citizens to listen to him and others like him.
Steven Koonin's new book Unsettled argues, as his publisher's page suggests, various climate-concerned "statements are profoundly misleading." Dean Myerson wrote a helpful Amazon review: "As more scientists look at Koonin's work, it is not faring well. Global fire decreasing? Apparently he is using figures that mostly measure manmade fires set by farmers, which are decreasing. Wildfire is increasing. Greenland not melting faster than 80 years ago? Well it is melting faster than 60, 70, 90 or 100 years ago. But there was a brief heat wave 80 years ago, making the statement true but irrelevant. It goes on an on like that." A May 3, 2021 Climatefeedback.org article edited by Boris Bellanger gives more details, noting "Twelve scientists analyzed the [Wall Street Journal] article [praising Koonin's book] and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be very low." Bellanger's article further refutes the Wall Street Journal April 25, 2021 article by Mark P. Mills.
Mills' wrote "Mr. Koonin makes clear, few areas of science are as complex and multidisciplinary as the planet’s climate." I must disagree. As I wrote in one of my most recently-visited posts, "What is the Best Way to Explain the Climate Crisis?," "astronaut and former Director, Earth Sciences Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Piers Sellers says 'the ice is melting, the Earth is warming, the sea level is rising – those are facts.'" Sellers continues, "Rather than being, 'oh my god, this is hopeless', say, 'OK, this is the problem, let’s be realistic and let’s find a way out of it'. And there are ways out of it. If we stopped burning fossil fuels right now, the planet would still keep warming for a little while before cooling off again.' At the time he says this, he has 'pancreatic cancer, stage four,' and dies December 23, 2016, about two months after the film [Before the Flood was] released October 21, 2016. I observed people close to death get rare perspective and honesty, and Sellers gives both."
Mills' comments "the right response is to debate the science" and "basis of claims that are so unsettled" are the same tired arguments oil giants made long enough to turn a treatable disease, to use the metaphor of a human body, into a possible terminal illness. More recently the tactic, according to Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, has been to reframe/redefine responsibility away from oil companies to consumers. Derrick Jensen in a video Forget Shorter Showers, based on his 2009 Orion essay, showed why this oil company ploy is ridiculous.
Supran and Oreskes wrote in the May 13, 2021 paper "Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications" at One Earth, "Smerecnik and Renegar have shown that subsequent BP branding activities similarly 'plac[e] participatory emphasis on consumer conservation behavior as opposed to corporate responsibility.'” In a related matter, BP, Koonin's former employer where he was Chief Scientist "from 2004 to early 2009," notoriously "featured a TV ad 'We will get this done. We will make this right.' as oil gushed 87 days [in the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill], and highly toxic dispersants were used to hide devastation from the public. Tim Wall of news.discovery.com noted December 3, 2012, in an article “BP Oil Highly Toxic When Mixed with Dispersants,” “When the oil was combined with the dispersant, the mix became up to 52 times more toxic than the oil alone, according to the study Martinex conducted at Georgia Tech.” I wrote about this, and more, in my 2014 "Manifesto from Poet on a Dying Planet" at Split Rock Review.
Similarly, Naomi Klein wrote at pbs.org July 1, 2010, expressing concerns about geo-engineering "Steven Koonin [ . . . . was] the man who [ . . . ] was overseeing the technology behind BP’s supposedly safe charge into deepwater drilling." Jim Thomas noted June 28, 2010, at theecologist.org, "Koonin was intimately acquainted with the very technologies that have failed so spectacularly on the Deepwater Horizon rig in his former job as BP’s chief scientist. While his current employer, Barack Obama [was] trying to figure out 'whose ass to kick’ over the spill, he [may have found it] instructive to zip back to a presentation by Koonin at MIT in 2005, in which we [saw] Koonin-as-oilman boasting of his company’s technological prowess in taking oil exploration and production into the ultra deep waters of the gulf.[ par break] In particular, he [said] that $50 million to bore a hole in the gulf’s seabed [would] yield a million barrels a day, describing the technical challenges of depth and pressure. A small note on the bottom of his slide [read] ‘marine environment creates integrity challenges’ - engineering-speak for ‘accidents likely’. [ . . . .] Koonin’s much lauded role at BP was precisely to apply cutting-edge science to the problem of declining oil reserves and growing climate crisis. Koonin led a team of researchers that would allow for the more economical extraction of hard-to-get oil (e.g. tar sands, deep water drilling)." As I noted in my aforementioned "Manifesto [. . .]," "Maybe BP could have prevented The [BP] Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill if it would have bought acoustic oil switch cut offs like those required by law in Brazil and Norway." In short, when it comes to transparency, Koonin has proven unreliable.
Given all this, how do I explain the popularity of Koonin's book with some readers? One answer is Merchants of Doubt Movie CLIP - Hard Pill to Swallow (2015).
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