Steven Koonin is a professor at NYU Stern School of Business and the director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). He is a theoretical physicist and a leading voice calling for what he describes as “climate realism.” Koonin was on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology for almost three decades. For five years, he was BP’s chief scientist, exploring renewable energy sources. He served in the Obama administration as an undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy.
Steven Koonin gave an interview to The Free Press. He said that the climate didn’t cause the California fires; politicians did.
“While climate might be playing a minor role, by far the greatest factor affecting how much damage results from a fire is the fuel available to it. Have you cleared the brush and other vegetation or not? Also, there’s the infrastructure that you’ve built. Are the houses fireproof? How close are they together? If we want to avoid the kind of disasters we’ve just seen in the Los Angeles basin, there are so many things we could be doing much more directly and easily than trying to reduce CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions.”
“The recent fires are a tragedy that’s due to ill-preparedness, not climate.”
When asked if the warming of the climate by 1.3 degrees Celsius would have prevented these fires, he said, “No, of course not.”
“There have been fires like this for thousands of years. ProPublica did a story a few years ago about the dangers of our policy of fire suppression, which results eventually in larger, uncontrollable fires. That story cites estimates that in prehistoric California, between 4 million and 11 million acres burned yearly. Compare that with about 1 million that burned in 2024 and 325,000 in 2023.”
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And the talk of hundred-year weather?
“How often does a hundred-year weather event happen? The answer is it’s a couple times a month somewhere around the globe. Scientists think in terms of 30 years.”
Wildfires aren’t caused by CO2 in any major way.
“Look at the work of Patrick Brown, a wildfire and climate expert at the Breakthrough Institute,” he said.” It’s true that at the end of 2024 there had been almost no precipitation in LA. But Brown has a chart showing end-of-year precipitation in LA over an 80-year span; there were many years as dry as last year, even though CO2 was much lower.”
“What’s going on is not quite a conspiracy, but it’s an alignment of interests. The media want clicks and eyeballs, and it’s news when something catastrophic happens. Politicians can use “climate change” as a vague and amorphous enemy to blame for bad things—instead of their incompetence. And it gives them an excuse to dole out money or put in regulations “to fix the problem.” And if you’ve started an NGO to save the world and the conclusion is that things really aren’t that bad, you’re out of business.”
“I’ve found when you sit and talk to scientists in private, they’re almost always quite sensible about what we know and don’t know and would not say the world is coming to an end or falling apart.”
He credited fossil fuels with vastly improving global prosperity and extending life expectancy.
“All this was built on abundant, safe, economical energy, largely from fossil fuels. They continue to be the most reliable and convenient way to help the half of humanity that lacks access to affordable, reliable energy.”
Germany is a cautionary tale.
“Look at Europe, especially Germany, which is ahead of us on decarbonization. They’re becoming a basket case—economic decline, deindustrialization, and buying gas from Vladimir Putin. That’s the worst of all worlds, all caused by an ill-considered, precipitous rush to decarbonize.”
Koonin also explained that wind and solar are too unreliable. Nuclear energy is a better way to go.
He believes people are beginning to get it. They are rebelling against the banning of gas-powered cars.
The physicist Richard Feynman, who was my neighbor in Altadena, said, “Nature cannot be fooled.” And regarding energy, I would say, “Nature, technology, and economic realities can’t be fooled.” I think people are going to start to educate themselves more about the technical and economic realities of energy, and I hope that they will take a closer look at the climate science as well. Then, more people will be asking, “Tell me again, why are we doing all this?”
Read more at The Free Press.
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