What climate change models can’t tell us
The just-published book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters has raised a furor. Authored by Steven Koonin, physicist and former chief scientist of the US Department of Energy, the volume contains a systematic critique of present-day climate science, concluding – among other things – that it provides no basis for the notion that the world faces a “climate emergency.”
Voices can already be heard attempting to dismiss the book on the grounds that “Koonin is not a climate scientist.” In fact, Koonin was deeply involved, alongside his work on astrophysics, nuclear physics and computational physics, in one of the most important areas of climate science: the study of the radiative balance of the atmosphere.
Here his work concentrated on the Earth’s albedo, or the proportion of incoming solar energy that is reflected back into space. The albedo is a critical parameter for climate modeling.
