Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters

by Steven E. Koonin

2018 article written by one of the IPCC’s coordinating lead authors reviewed a further four years of published papers and came to a similar conclusion: . . . the total economic impacts of climate change are negative, but modest on average, and that the severe impacts on less developed countries are caused primarily by poverty.30 The consensus on the minimal overall economic impact of rising temperatures is well known to experts, though it’s an inconvenient one for those wishing to sound the alarm on climate. I was dumbfounded when I asked a prominent environmental policymaker about the UN assessment and the response was: “Yes, it’s unfortunate that the impact numbers are so small.”