To the editors:
It was a pleasure to read Robert Socolow’s thoughtful and incisive review of my book. His comments about the skepticism of the physics community regarding climate science ring particularly true. I have met many climate scientists who have expressed their frustrations to me about the way physicists skeptically assess the work of climate scientists, most often without actually studying it. Part of this comes, as Socolow suggests, from concerns about the complexity of the earth’s climate system. But another part comes from the innate haughtiness of physicists about most other fields, and the sense that if the science were worthwhile doing, pure physicists would be doing it. My late friend Freeman Dyson was a poster child for this attitude. I suspect at its heart, he was suspicious of climate science because he wasn’t doing it, and felt that as a result, the work was second rate.
In any case, the fundamental physics behind climate science is well tested and has a distinguished provenance, as I tried to show in my book. I am thus particularly appreciative that Socolow feels it bridges the “physics–climate science chasm.” He makes an important point that climate scientists have not done themselves a favor by packaging climate science as if it were done by voting. This is just one of the many public-relations hurdles that climate scientists have to overcome. Most of the gauntlet has been thrown down by others, of course, but it is surprising how rarely climate scientists feel comfortable simply saying that the underlying physics is well tested and sound. I agree with Socolow that if they did so, physicists might come into the conversation with a more generous attitude.
As for Chapter 8, I decided early on that, having read some of the literature and talked to a number of experts, the detailed dynamics of ocean heating and circulation was not a subject whose physics would be amenable to the kind of popular audience I was hoping to attract. Moreover, unless I feel I have mastered the underlying science, I don’t feel comfortable writing with authority, and the more I learn about ocean dynamics and chemistry, the more complicated it seems to me to be. Finally, having taken readers through some fundamental physics arguments early in the book, which I knew would be challenging to some, a fact that has been confirmed by some readers, I wanted the second half of the book to be gentler and more descriptive. I cannot say if it was an error in judgment or not. I do think that the important points are the well-established facts that the enhanced carbon dioxide abundance in the atmosphere remains there for a millennium without significant reduction, and that simulations show that enhanced temperatures will remain roughly constant during that time. These are key takeaways that I felt were easiest to express in graphs rather than with deductive reasoning. But the two-box model described by Socolow appears to give a good heuristic justification for what happens, and I appreciate his providing it in his review.
I heartily applaud Socolow’s suggestions that climate science be incorporated into physics courses. Not only does it provide a topical example—something undergraduate students often yearn for—but it would also help convince the next generation of physicists that this is not just good science, but fascinating science. Moreover, unlike the theoretical particle physics and cosmology I have unapologetically spent much of my life studying, it may have urgent practical utility.
Lawrence Krauss
Robert Socolow replies:
Lawrence and I, thankfully, are on the same page. Both of us urge physicists to get more involved with climate science. It would be great if thoughts about how this might be accomplished were to appear on the pages of Inference. It would be great to hear from big-picture theorists, modelers, experimentalists, those who can identify agencies that might get interested, and those who are in a position to affect how physics is taught at every level. Ours is a call to action.
