Don’t Believe the Hype About Antarctica’s Melting Glaciers` | Hacker News Reader

Don’t Believe the Hype About Antarctica’s Melting Glaciers`

wsj.com

12 pointsstarkd12 comments

A decade of (exasperated) rebuttal from actual experts has not deterred Steven Koonin from repeating the same dilettante (unserious) nonsense.

Of course Murdoch's WSJ keeps publishing this loon's blather.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Koonin#Criticism_of_...

Because anyone who offers a contrary opinion is automatically a loon.

Nope. It takes decades of effort. Repeating the same nonsense, ignoring contrary information, refusing to learn, lack of humility, and putting fame & glory ahead of intellectual honesty.

https://archive.ph/CNG1D

https://web.archive.org/web/20220924010749/https://archive.p...

An opinion piece that basically says “it’s complicated” is hardly the argument they’re making it out to be. Consider me unconvinced and still concerned about the climate.

> Mr. Koonin is a professor at New York University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.”

Maybe when an accredited scientist speaks about his field, you should at least listen? learnt nothing from the pandemic?

Koonin has been repeatedly criticized by his peers for cherry picking data, misrepresentation of facts, and “muddying the waters” of the climate science debate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Koonin#Criticism_o...

I’m not going to sit and listen to one dissenting voice when a mountain of evidence and their peers contradict them.

It’s funny you bring up the pandemic, because this is exactly the same type of politicization the pandemic brought to science. Did /you/ learn nothing?

He is not the lone voice of dissent. There's also Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg. The fact that they do not share the same panicked attitude about the climate science does not mean they no longer care about the issue. They are only saying that it is manageable without severe disruptions to the economy.

> From 2004 to 2009, Koonin was employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief Scientist. From 2009 to 2011, he was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the Obama administration.

Someone like that isn't just a scientist any more, they're a politician and senior manager. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's deceptive to leave it out.

From wikipedia, if they are to be believed: Steven E. Koonin is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering

Interestingly, the chief scientist at BP is also named Steven Koonin, according to LinkedIn.

While there may be hype, don't take his writing to mean "tune out concerns about the ice sheets in Antartica" or anywhere. 1 out of 5 dentists recommended sugar-laden gum to chew, and I heard a weather scientist say over lunch to me once that atmospheric gases don't trap heat significantly. Real scientists cast doubt on the connection of smoking to cancer too.

He wasn't making an argument. He was simply putting the latest news in some context and saying there's no reason to panic. A position a number of other environmentalists have arrived at as well. A perfectly sane position.

Imagine posting this on social and seeing the disagreement

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