Kennedy Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
On Wednesday March 15 at 5:45pm, the Steamboat Institute, a conservative organization focused on promoting America first principles and defending liberty, will collaborate with the Cornell Free Speech Alliance to host a debate on the resolution: “Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” Featuring Steven E. Koonin and Robert H. Socolow, Ph. D, the debate will be held at Cornell’s Call Auditorium in Kennedy Hall, but is also available online. Washington Examiner reporter Sarah Westwood will be moderating.
Socolow will be arguing for the resolution. He received his bachelors in physics and doctorate in theoretical high-energy physics from Harvard in 1964. Socolow is professor emeritus at Princeton University in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He was a co-principal investigator of Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative and led the “distillate” project at Princeton. He is known for his paper “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies.”
Koonin, will be arguing the negative stance. Dr. Koonin received a Bachelor of Science from Caltech, and a Ph. D from MIT. Dr. Koonin has served as Caltech’s provost, the Chief Scientist at BP, and served under the Obama Administration as the position of Undersecretary for Science in the United States Department of Energy. Throughout his career, he has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in multiple fields including energy technology, astrophysics, climate science, and scientific computation.
Dr. Koonin is known for his controversial writing on climate change, which includes his 2021 book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters and a 2014 Wall Street Journal Article titled “Climate Science Is Not Settled.”
Both professors are very knowledgeable in their fields, teeing up what could be a high-profile event, especially since climate change is such a controversial topic at Cornell.
Registration for the event is available on the Steamboat Institute’s website.
