My Good Sources

[Karen Street]

You asked for individuals we trust to speak about climate change.

I personally don't cite Hansen to characterize best current thinking on climate change for two reasons. First, he co-authored a report or three showing that we can get back to 350 ppm if we give up coal, which PNAS pretty much wrote a counter report to, Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions. It is credible (and I believe) that 350 ppm is as high as we want to go, or higher, but he appears to be speaking beyond the science in assuming that we can get back to that level. Second, he has moved into policy proposals, where he is clearly out of his expertise. Gore's movie was very powerful on the science, but his recommendations and observations in policy show surprisingly poor overlap with economists' thinking. One danger of recommending people on the science is that lay people expect them to be knowledgeable about both science and policy if they talk about both.

My particular choices are presidents of AAAS, national lab directors, etc. Some people clearly have established their creds, eg, Holdren years before he became AAAS president, was asked to co-chair several energy committees. Multiple requests to co-chair from groups like PCAST, InterAcademy Council, etc, is a clue. Steve Chu served in the role of co-chair several times in his short tenure as director of LBNL. The co-chairs of these committees are also expected to characterize scientific understanding carefully, even if their expertise is policy.

For policy, I also respect Severin Borenstein, head of University of California Energy Institute. I don't know how to explain why, but whether my preconceptions overlap well or poorly with what he says, I always follow his logic, and so far have not found any instance where my preconceptions beat out his explanation. He is also well respected, though I don't know that he is on PCAST level committees.