Steven Elliot Koonin (born December 12, 1951) is an American

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...

and former director of the

Center for Urban Science and Progress The NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (commonly referred to as CUSP) is a degree-granting technology and research institute in downtown Brooklyn, New York City. It is a graduate school of New York University focusing on urban informatics ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's

Tandon School of Engineering Tandon (or Tandan, Tanden, or Tondon) is a surname found among Hindu Khatris and Sikhs of Punjab, India. It is derived from a Khatri clan. Notable people Notable people include: Activists *Purushottam Das Tandon, ''Bharat Ratna'', Indian freed ...

. 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 Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...

Biography

Born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York City, Koonin graduated from high school at the age of 16, received his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

from the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

and his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

under the supervision of Arthur Kerman in the

MIT Center for Theoretical Physics The MIT Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) is the hub of theoretical nuclear physics, particle physics, and quantum information research at MIT. It is a subdivision of MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Department of Physics. Research CTP ...

. In 1975, Koonin joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology as an assistant professor of

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...

becoming one of their youngest ever faculty, and served as the institute's provost from 1995 to 2004. In 2004, Koonin joined BP as their chief scientist, where he was responsible for guiding the company's long-range technology strategy, particularly in alternative and

renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...

sources. He was tapped for the position of

Under Secretary for Science The Under Secretary for Science and Innovation, formerly the Under Secretary for Science and Energy, is a high-ranking position within the United States Department of Energy. The position was created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and the first ...

at the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

Steven Chu Steven Chu and served from May 19, 2009, to November 18, 2011. Koonin left in November 2011 for a position at the

Institute for Defense Analyses The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) is an American non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) – the Systems and Analyses Center (SAC), the Science and Technology Policy Institute ...

. In 2012, he was appointed the founding director of

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

(CUSP). He has served on numerous advisory bodies for the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

, the

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philippin ...

, and the Department of Energy and its various national laboratories, such as the

JASON defense advisory group JASON is an independent group of elite scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature. The group was created in the aftermath of the Sputnik launch as a way to reinvigorate ...

, which he has chaired. Koonin's research interests have included theoretical nuclear,

many-body The many-body problem is a general name for a vast category of physical problems pertaining to the properties of microscopic systems made of many interacting particles. ''Microscopic'' here implies that quantum mechanics has to be used to provid ...

, and

computational physics Computational physics is the study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics for which a quantitative theory already exists. Historically, computational physics was the first application of modern computers in science, ...

nuclear astrophysics Nuclear astrophysics is an interdisciplinary part of both nuclear physics and astrophysics, involving close collaboration among researchers in various subfields of each of these fields. This includes, notably, nuclear reactions and their rates as ...

, and global

environmental science Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...

Views on climate change

Koonin became publicly involved in the policy debate about climate change starting with a ''Wall Street Journal'' opinion piece in 2017, in which he floated the idea of a

red team A red team or team red are a group that plays the role of an enemy or competitor to provide security feedback from that perspective. Red teams are used in many fields, especially in cybersecurity, airport security, law enforcement, the military a ...

/blue team exercise for climate science. In 2018, the

Environmental Protection Agency A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

(EPA) under the leadership of

Scott Pruitt Edward Scott Pruitt (born May 9, 1968) is an American lawyer, lobbyist and Republican politician from the state of Oklahoma. He served as the fourteenth Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from February 17, 2017, to July ...

proposed a public debate on climate change to refute the 2017 Climate Science Special Report. According to a draft press release edited by Koonin and William Happer, Princeton physics professor and director of the

CO2 Coalition The Coalition is a nonprofit advocacy organization in the United States founded in 2015. Its claims conflict with the scientific consensus on climate change and it spreads misinformation about climate change. History The Coalition is a succe ...

, they planned "red team"/blue team exercises to challenge the scientific consensus on climate. The draft was never released, and the plans were not carried out. In 2019, the

Trump Administration Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...

proposed to create a "Presidential Committee on Climate Security" at the National Security Council that would conduct an "adversarial" review of the scientific consensus on climate change. Koonin was actively involved in recruiting others to be part of this review. The committee was scrapped in favor of an initiative not "subject to the same level of public disclosure as a formal advisory committee". In 2021, Koonin published the book ''Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters''.

Criticism of Koonin's 2014 ''Wall Street Journal'' commentary

In an article in ''Slate'', physicist

Raymond Pierrehumbert Raymond Thomas Pierrehumbert is the Halley Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. Previously, he was Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He was a lead author on the Third Assessment Report of th ...

criticized Koonin's 2014 commentary in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', "Climate Science Is Not Settled," as "a litany of discredited arguments" with "nuggets of truth ... buried beneath a rubble of false or misleading claims from the standard climate skeptics' canon."

Reception of 2021 book ''Unsettled''

Critics of Koonin's book ''Unsettled'' accused him of

cherry picking Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data th ...

data, muddying the waters surrounding the science of climate change, and having no experience in

climate science Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , '' -logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of stud ...

. In a review in ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

'', economist

Gary Yohe Gary Wynn Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. He holds a PhD from Yale University. Yohe specializes in Microeconomic theory, Natural Resources, and En ...

wrote that Koonin "falsely suggest that we don't understand the risks well enough to take action": Physicist

Mark Boslough Mark Boslough is an American physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, research professor at University of New Mexico, fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and chair of the Asteroid Day Expert Panel. He is an expert in the study of ...

, a former student of Koonin, posted a critical review at Yale Climate Connections. He stated that "Koonin makes use of an old strawman concocted by opponents of climate science in the 1990s to create an illusion of arrogant scientists, biased media, and lying politicians – making them easier to attack." Nonprofit organization ''

Inside Climate News ''Inside Climate News'' is a non-profit news organization, focusing on environmental journalism.Curtis BrainardInsideClimate wins a Pulitzer ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (April 16, 2013). The publication writes that it "covers clean energy, c ...

'' reported that climate scientists call Koonin's conclusions "fatally out of date ... and based on the 2013 physical science report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." Mark P. Mills, a senior fellow at the

Manhattan Institute The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (renamed in 1981 from the International Center for Economic Policy Studies) is a conservative American think tank focused on domestic policy and urban affairs, established in Manhattan in 1978 by Ant ...

, a conservative think tank, and faculty fellow at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, lauded the book in ''

'' as "rebut ngmuch of the dominant political narrative". Twelve scientists analyzed Mills's arguments and said that he merely repeated Koonin's incorrect and misleading claims. Koonin responded with an article answering these critics.

Publications

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Koonin, Steven E. 1951 births Living people Obama administration personnel Stuyvesant High School alumni People associated with energy BP people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences California Institute of Technology alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni California Institute of Technology faculty Members of JASON (advisory group) New York University faculty Polytechnic Institute of New York University faculty MIT Center for Theoretical Physics alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society