From 2004 until 2009, Cal Tech physicist Steve Koonin served as Chief Scientist of the British Petroleum corporation. Despite decades of dedicated public service directing research for the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, Steve is best known today as the author of Unsettled:What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters.
His best seller is at once erudite, informative and infuriating, because despite its astute insights into the energy economy, and lip service to the uncontroversial conventional wisdom of climate science, it is a highly selective narrative that reads, in the words of Texas A&M climatologist Andy Dressler, like a brief from:
"A defense lawyer for carbon dioxide"
What makes Andy' pronouncement ironic is the backstory of Steve's British Petroleum years. He was brought on board the oil giant by its President, John Brown, who recruited him as part of the campaign to rebrand BP as a Green corporation, an effort led by a legendary advertising agency, Ogilvy and Mather.
One of the memes unleashed then remains with us today. It has become so ubiquitous that the world has largely forgotten whence it came- this PR spot ad commissioned by BP:
* ( Full disclosure- I introduced Brown to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy pro bono when he sought logistical support from the Air Force for BP's efforts to extinguish the Kuwait Oil Fires)