For many people around the world concerned about climate change, Charles Koch haunts their dreams like the ultimate boogeyman, provided of course they’ve never clapped eyes on Hector the Lump of Coal©.

Koch is the Republican petrochemical billionaire who runs Koch Industries with his brother David.

Through a network of think tanks and campaign groups dubbed the Kochtopus, the brothers have poured tens of millions of dollars into groups that deny climate science or work to block greenhouse gas cuts.

To get a feel for how some see the Koch brothers, please allow this image to ferment in your mind for a while.

A two-headed Kochtopus hydra lounges Cleopatra-style in a bath of milk and crude while Hector showers it with hundred dollar bills bearing the heads of Charles and David.

Now go eat some strong cheese and have a dreamy sleep. You’re welcome.

What I’m trying to get across here is that a lot of people don’t like the Kochs that much.

The New York Times has reported the Koch’s political network has an US$889 million budget to influence the 2016 US Presidential election race. Some of the recipients of that cash no doubt like Charles and David a lot more.

But despite the controversy that Koch cash has helped to manufacture around climate change, Charles Koch himself has said very little about the issue over the years.

So when a Washington Post journalist earlier this week asked if he was “worried about climate change” his answer provided a rare opportunity for assessment.

He apparently accepts that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere might cause the globe to warm, which is a bit like accepting that the world is round.

But I asked some climate scientists to provide a quick review of his statements.

Let’s all dive into that bath of milk and crude together.



Charles Koch (CK): Well, I mean I believe it’s been warming some. There’s a big debate on that, because it depends on whether you use satellite measurements, balloon, or you use ground ones that have been adjusted. But there has been warming.

Professor Andy Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, University of New South Wales, Australia (AP): Actually it does not depend what you use. The observed warming signal is effectively the same if you use satellites of ground measurements. This was an issue in the past but the comment by Mr Koch is now out of date. Professor Michael Mann, director of Penn State Earth System Science Center, United States (MM): It is distressing that someone who has spent so much money attacking the science understands so little of it. Nearly everything he says is wrong. First of all, there is no record, be it satellites, weather balloons, or otherwise, that contradicts evidence of the warming of Earth’s surface.

CK: The CO2 goes up, the CO2 has probably contributed to that. But they say it’s going to be catastrophic. There is no evidence to that.

AP: This statement is untrue. Evidence from past climates demonstrates that catastrophic change can occur with high emissions of CO2, which in that case was natural. There have also been observed catastrophes that are consistent with what the climate science is telling us. For example, heatwave events in the last decade have killed many thousands of people, and these heatwaves have a fingerprint of human emissions of CO2 all over them. I am sure Mr Koch would agree that those thousands of lives lost is catastrophic. MM: The worlds’ scientists, which is to say the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Chemical Society, and 30+ other leading scientific societies in the US alone, have spoken. Climate change is real, and caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels from which Mr Koch profits directly. The scientific community (and the National Security Community here in the US for that matter) has determined that climate change already poses a great threat, and that the threat will get only worse if we fail to act. Professor Steven Sherwood, director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, Australia (SS): Koch’s assumption that future warming will not be bad is a bald-faced statement of wishful thinking with zero scientific basis, contradicted by Earth’s climate history and by all reliable quantitative calculations that have been made so far.

CK: They have these models that show it, but the models don’t work … To be scientific, it has to be testable and refutable.

AP: Climate models are built on basic laws of physics - they are not analogous to the economic models Mr Koch is more familiar with. Climate models have been thoroughly tested and they work well for the large-scale climate. They are testable, they are refutable. For the large-scale climate, and for estimating the impact of increasing CO2 on the large scale climate, Mr Koch’s statements are demonstrably wrong. MM: The primary evidence for human-caused climate change isn’t models, but rather, basic physics and chemistry we’ve known for nearly two centuries (i.e. the greenhouse effect), and irrefutable evidence that Earth has warmed as we would expect as the greenhouse effect has been increased through fossil fuel burning (something the Kochs profit from directly). Climate models *have* been used to make predictions, and they’ve succeeded with flying colors. If Mr Koch were to read my book Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change he would learn, for example, that by most measures,the climate models have historically *underestimated* the rate of climate change, just the opposite of what Mr. Koch claims. SS: Predictions of warming published by the IPCC in 1990 have proven roughly correct at least so far. Warming over the last few decades is clear in all of the observational types we have plus many indirect indicators like species migration.

CK: And so I mean, it has elements of science in it, and then of conjecture, ideology and politics.

AP: That is a statement that casts doubt on the rigour of the scientific method used in climate science by the physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, atmospheric scientists and oceanographers who work on the area and perhaps reflects on how Mr Koch thinks as distinct from how climate science operates. SS: These comments reflect the usual mythology propagated for many years by those who for whatever reason are unable to accept what we know about our planet.

CK: So do we want to create a catastrophe today in the economy because of some speculation based on models that don’t work?

AP: No, we do not. But redeveloping the US economy to use renewables, drive energy efficiency, reduce dependence on oil and coal and to drive world-class innovation in technology as the US did in the past is hardly likely to be catastrophic!

CK: Those are my questions. But believe me, I spent my whole life studying science and the philosophy of science, and our whole company is committed to science. We have all sorts of scientific developments. But I want it to be real science, not politicized science.

AP: Agreed. The perception that Climate Science is “politicised” is unfortunate. I am not sure why it has become so. The laws of physics do not ask if you are a Republican or a Democrat. Climate Scientists do not have an eye to how they might vote when re-interpreting how to represent clouds in a climate model. It may be that some public advocates do, but I would encourage Mr Koch to read the peer reviewed scientific literature in the journals published by the American Geophysical Union or the American Meteorological Society. Reading this literature leads to the unambiguous conclusion that we have a clear and present danger associated with climate change and that it would be wise for any company or business to understand those risks and act accordingly. MM: I must say that I’m absolutely stunned by Mr Koch’s complaining, without any apparent sense of irony, about the “politicization” of science. For it is ideologues like Mr Koch, who have spent many millions of dollars attacking the scientific community through front groups and hired guns, that have politicized this matter. The Koch Brothers continue to poison our public discourse through their funding of organizations and front groups dedicated to blocking any progress in dealing with this problem. History will view them most unkindly for that.

Fellow Guardian blogger Dana Nuccitelli has a piece on all this too.