The author is clearly highly credentialed and no doubt an expert on the subject, but I found the narrative style really let this book down. An opportunity was lost to engage a wider audience, as this was difficult to get into and engage with even as someone with an interest in the subject.

Addressing this subject is important and timely, but a more engaging and accessible narrative style would have made for a more cogent and effective argument.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publish for a free reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a book I think everybody should read, but you won't like it. :) It's not that he's not probably right on a lot of things, it's that it's so hard to follow the endless trudge through complex math and science, and it's very technical. It's a lot like reading a 300 page company report. Koonin did convince me that a lot of the data has been manipulated. One of the most eye-opening pieces of this was his use of graphs that showed very well how people have precisely graphed the data to show what they want to show (by starting at an exact year after extremes, for instance). It was reassuring in a way, as I am someone who has been very concerned about climate change for quite some time. It's not that reassuring though, since he doesn't really argue a lot of the points. He says climate is changing but it's not necessarily for the same reasons or at the same levels that others say. He also offers really disappointing answers -- basically we need to either do expensive, difficult things for eternity or we need to learn to just adapt to the changes that are coming. He thinks we're good at adapting and we'll just manage that. As a parent, I'm not satisfied with leaving that kind of hope for my kids.

I am constantly disappointed that the media and our governments seem so committed to giving us incomplete and misleading information "for the greater good." We've seen that throughout the pandemic and Koonin does a good job of showing that it's going on with climate science, too. The takeaway is that we've been misled but not in ways that really matter, and that Koonin ultimately really doesn't know how this is going to end or what could save us.

I read a digital ARC of this book via net gally.

UNSETTLED by Steven E. Koonin is meant to be an apolitical look at climate change, focusing on "What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters." However, this new book has met with several challenges, perhaps most notably in a Scientific American article. The business media, including Forbes and The Wall Street Journal, have instead tended to support his position. Koonin, a physicist, has an impressive list of credentials, including academic ties to CalTech and New York University, amongst others. He splits this book into two parts: The Science and The Response. Initially, he discusses aspects like heat waves, hurricanes, Greenland's ice sheet, and economic impact of climate change, and then devotes a couple of chapters to "why the science has been communicated so poorly" and what improvements might be made. At a time when two-thirds of Americans think government should do more, Koonin offers a confusing (or overly nuanced?) summary since he agrees that the planet is warming and appears to acknowledge that human-caused emissions are a major factor. Why such reluctance to embrace more proactive policy action then?

Advocating that we make only "low-risk changes," Koonin merely suggests that "climate science would also be improved by deliberate efforts to involve scientists from other fields in studying climate ... [and] we need to ... help non-experts become more critical consumers of media coverage of climate." While those are laudable goals, it seems that with all of his knowledge and experience, Koonin could press for more. He acknowledges this weakness, saying, "I have deliberately written this book in a descriptive manner rather than a prescriptive one." His detractors might better ponder how to highlight those areas of scientific agreement, further informing the public so they, having come to a reasoned conclusion, are motivated to push for appropriate speed and scale of government response.

Links in live post:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/that-obama-scientist-climate-skeptic-youve-been-hearing-about/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tilakdoshi/2021/04/30/lets-work-for-science-with-integrity-steve-koonins-new-book-unsettled/?sh=5af1ed1f2f38
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-physicist-became-a-climate-truth-teller-11618597216
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/

I would like to thank the author Net Galley and Steven E. Koonin for providing me access to an evaluation copy.

Let me start by saying that I’m pretty strongly inclined to support the idea that earth’s climate had been changing and is being influenced by the activities of man. However, I tried to keep an open mind.

The author speaks from a very authoritative angle. He presents the reader with a mass of data, charts and information to support his thesis. And that thesis is: yes climate is changing, yes humans are influencing that change, but the data does not reflect an open and shut case on the scope of catastrophe being driven by those chances as portrayed by public figures and the media.

I can accept that your average citizen, run of the mill press, and even not deeply involved decision makers can be misinformed by relying on summaries of summaries of summaries of factual and scientific studies and lack of effort in pursuing detail and footnotes.

Less clear to me is how a reported ~97% of climate Scientist have reached consensus on climate change and its drivers (a finding the author reports as being debunked), while decisions makers that presumably are much more deeply involved with studying the evidence can be so incapable of understanding what is going on. My assumption would be that such scientists and policy drivers would have the incentive and capability to dwell deeply into the details cited by the writer. Such a situation implies a huge level of incompetence and/ or a vast and unproductive global conspiracy.

I respect the writers position and data driven arguments (although I am not a scientist and am all too aware that facts and statistics can be presented in many manners). However, while he presents a conundrum I am not sure he clearly explains what is causing it and how to correct and alter the direction being pursued.

Having made the argument that the scope and imminence of the negative impact of climate change is nowhere near as large as it is being portrayed, the author a little surprisingly focuses on the means to address the change. He goes into depth on the severe challenges we face in rapid economic adjustments designed to meet emission reduction targets and then presents a case for supporting adaptation strategies with the associated hurdles that would need to be overcome.

I nevertheless rate the book highly because of the well thought out, logical, data based presentation of its case. It will at the very least encourage me to be more critical and inquisitive of this topic in the future, as is my hope for other readers.

This book is eye-opening and unsettling. I like the way Steven Koonin illustrated on how facts that get reported in popular media, summits is not exactly what is happening out there as most of these conclusions are consensus based. I would recommend this book for all environment enthusiasts.

Unsettled : What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t and Why It Matters (2021) by Steven Koonin is a very interesting book on Climate Change. Koonin has a PhD from Caltech in theoretical physics and interestingly served as Under Secretary for Science in the Obama administration. He describes himself as a Democrat. Koonin has also written a number of text books on Computational Physics. For anyone looking for a book that describes the skeptical view of climate science this is an excellent choice.

It’s worth noting that Koonin accepts happily that increasing C02 and Methane in the atmosphere increases global temperatures.

Koonin first precisely describes the change that we have seen in the climate. He points out that there definitely have been changes and that some of these changes are due to how we have developed cities and used land for industry. The way that temperature is measured in the seas is very well described.

Koonin really gets into his element when he started discussing the climate models. He points out many interesting and inconvenient facts about them. It’s remarkable that the temperature models are within 3C of the actual temperature of the earth, but then trusting their perturbations on a temperature change less than that is curious to say the least.

Unsettled is very well written and the explanations on the limits of the models are very clear. Koonin also goes into how heat records are exaggerated and sometimes deliberately distorted. The sea level the changes that happened from 1800-1950 are pointed out and their similar size to the sea rise since then is very well outlined. Koonin also points out alternative explanations for the bad fire seasons recently in California.

Koonin also describes how by 2100 the world is very much expected to be at least 5 times richer than it is now, but that climate will reduce wealth and happiness by some degree, but by 10% or similar. He also says that reducing to ‘net zero’ by even 2070 is extraordinarily difficult and that politicians making promises for when they are long out of office is dubious at best.

Unsettled is an excellent look at climate from a highly accomplished physicist who was in a very senior position in the Obama administration. The book is well written and insightful. Along with former IPCC author Roger Pielke Jnr’s ‘The Climate Fix’ this is one of the best books on climate from a somewhat skeptical view.

I'll admit that at first I was skeptical. Hearing that a scientist who was formerly an employee of BP oil, had written a book questioning some commonly held beliefs about climate change, made me wonder about his motivations. After reading this book however, and some of the other things that Koonin has written, I think I understand his point of view a bit better, and I appreciate this collection of information.

Currently in American culture, so many things seem to be divided along political lines, with people's sense of identity being tied to their ideological 'team'. Koonin's position seems to be, that in the case of climate science, the 'politics effect' has caused people to oversimplify the data and take an extreme stance; with people on both sides of the political spectrum slightly misrepresenting the data to suit whatever their narrative is. He contends that there is general agreement among climate scientists that humans are affecting the climate, but predicting what the effects of these changes will be is extremely difficult to do. If you are interested in absorbing a considerable amount of information, without being primarily motivated by your beliefs, then you should be able to appreciate Koonin's scientific examination of these topics.

The book is divided in to two main sections; Part One: The Science has several chapters analyzing the data of specific climate issues, while Part Two: The Response offers about 50 pages of ideas about future policies and measures to respond to a changing climate. There are plenty of charts and graphs that Koonin refers to throughout the book, some of which I found very helpful in conjunction with his analysis. In Part One, Koonin discusses the history of Earth's climate, the effects of CO2, computer modeling, sea level rise, and some climate myths. He wraps up this section by discussing the difficulties in communicating data accurately to the public. Part Two discusses possible strategies for responding to climate change, and which of these plans Koonin thinks are the most likely to actually be implemented.

Overall I found this book to be a great source of information about this topic. I think that if you read it, you will agree that the author doesn't seem to have a political or economic agenda; but that he really is passionate about the science, and making sure the public has the most accurate understanding of the data.

A really fascinating, complex book full of compelling data and a rich narrative. Although it comes across as a piece of climate denial literature, the author was an advisor to the Obama administration and is very credentialed in science; what he is doing is showing that climate science has been co-opted into zingy slogans and catchy phrases, watering down the true complex nature of climate change.

If You Want To Talk About Climate, You Need To Read This Book First. Seriously, it is *that* important and *that* illuminating. Here, Koonin lays bare what the science actually says – and what “the science” that so many claim is “settled” want to make you think. Chapter 4 alone, where Koonin – who helped *create* some of the first computer based climate models and literally wrote a textbook on the subject – discusses climate models and how reliable – or not – they are is worth the price of the book.

Ultimately this is a book that no partisan will be happy with. Koonin eviscerates positions on both the left and the right of American politics with equal aplomb, sticking to the facts of the matter at hand as the science itself dictates them and refraining from veering into political recommendations. Thus, where the science genuinely is clear that humans are having some impact or another, Koonin points this out in precise detail – precise enough for the purposes of this text anyway, while citing the studies that show the more scientific level precision. Where the science is more muddled, Koonin points this out too – and explains where we know what we don’t know and even some of where we don’t know what we don’t know.

This book, per its very cover, sets out to uncover what we know, what we don’t know, and why the distinction matters – and it does exactly this truly remarkably well. Very much recommended.