Climate Scientists Respond To Attacks on Objectivity (theguardian.com) 39
Climate scientists who were mocked and gaslighted after speaking up about their fears for the future have said acknowledging strong emotions is vital to their work. From a report: The researchers said these feelings should not be suppressed in an attempt to reach supposed objectivity. Seeing climate experts' fears and opinions about the climate crisis as irrelevant suggests science is separate from society and ultimately weakens it, they said.
The researchers said they had been subject to ridicule by some scientists after taking part in a large Guardian survey of experts in May, during which they and many others expressed their feelings of extreme fear about future temperature rises and the world's failure to take sufficient action. They said they had been told they were not qualified to take part in this broad discussion of the climate crisis, were spreading doom and were not impartial.
However, the researchers said that embracing their emotions was necessary to do good science and was a spur to working towards better ways of tackling the climate crisis and the rapidly increasing damage being done to the world. They also said that those dismissing their fears as doom-laden and alarmist were speaking frequently from a position of privilege in western countries, with little direct experience of the effects of the climate crisis.
The researchers said they had been subject to ridicule by some scientists after taking part in a large Guardian survey of experts in May, during which they and many others expressed their feelings of extreme fear about future temperature rises and the world's failure to take sufficient action. They said they had been told they were not qualified to take part in this broad discussion of the climate crisis, were spreading doom and were not impartial.
However, the researchers said that embracing their emotions was necessary to do good science and was a spur to working towards better ways of tackling the climate crisis and the rapidly increasing damage being done to the world. They also said that those dismissing their fears as doom-laden and alarmist were speaking frequently from a position of privilege in western countries, with little direct experience of the effects of the climate crisis.
Well, (almost) nobody likes Cassandra (Score:2, Troll)
Does not make her any less right about what is to come though. But most people are deep into denial as a coping strategy. For individual problems that can work, as many things fix themselves on small-scale. But species-scale? That is basically a proof of extreme incompetency and usually leads to extinction. As we are not there yet and species survival is still a real possibility, let's mess things up some more!
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Being very emotional and biased about something doesn't make you wrong. It just means that if you're presented with information that contradicts what you believe you're likely to give it less weight and shuff it off compared to data that supports what you believe.
That's a human behavior we can reliably see happen. People like that sometimes can be proven they are wrong and they just say, 'Well I could have been right' and still really don't accept the issues with their view.
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Being emotional about real problems makes you _dumb_. And while you can still be right by accident, it is not something anybody sane will ever rely on.
Well, "dumb" is the usual modus of most people. The human race is approaching a decision point at this time and it does not look like it will come out successful.
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Re: Well, (almost) nobody likes Cassandra (Score:2)
Your willful ignorance is far past ridiculousness and well into insanity, which explains why you support a demented racist
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Don't kid yourself. Being "dumb" is something all humans do, as is being emotional about important questions. I think you can think of science as a kind of emergent coping mechanism for that. As individuals we can always fool ourselves.
Both climate scientists and climate denialists have opinions informed by emotion and which generate strong emotions. The difference is that science works within an external social framework that demands rigid and rigorous criticism, both self-criticism and exposure to ext
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Being emotional about real problems makes you _dumb_.
Being emotional about real problems is _normal_. Suppressing the emotion to get things done is heroic, but it comes at a cost. Just ask PTSD sufferers about that.
Well, "dumb" is the usual modus of most people.
True. And if we had better education, more responsible media, and an economy that wasn't predicated on creating an endless supply of unthinking suckers, then we'd have less of the "dumb" to deal with.
The human race is approaching a decision point at this time and it does not look like it will come out successful.
Sadly, I agree with you. Does my sadness cause you to see me as "dumb"? Just curious.
All the time (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who don't like getting news from The Guardian, the article they talk about is at Nature's site : https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
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let's talk about the climate scientists who lost their jobs and were basically banned from their profession and the universities they often worked at because they published their findings which went against
Please, provide some actual names. I think we will find they were frauds who fabricated data, like Brian Thomas.
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That is the essence of science, look at the work, not the person.
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>science is separate from society and ultimately weakens it
The actual sentence:
Seeing climate experts' fears and opinions about the climate crisis as irrelevant suggests science is separate from society and ultimately weakens it, they said.
You know, it KINDA seems like you might be trying to intentionally misrepresent what was written so that you can refute an argument that was never actually made.
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which makes sense because if you think about it these climate guys are just weathermen on a longer timeframe
Not even close. Watch the man, not the dog. - Neil DeGrasse Tyson. [youtube.com] Seasonal shifts and long-term trends are COMPLETELY different from trying to model day-to-day / hour-to-hour weather changes.
Weather is not climate, and the only people who think otherwise are sisterfucking Russian Trolls and Klan Bots like ShitbrainKendall.
Re:Just like weathermen (Score:4, Informative)
Meanwhile, here in the real world, climate predictions from the 1980s [phys.org] have turned out to be remarkably accurate. This is from the abstract of James Hansen's 1981 paper [science.org], "Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide".
It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980's. Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.
Every single year since 1987 has set a record as one of the 10 warmest years ever recorded to date. Droughts have become more common and more severe in North America and Asia. Sea level rise has accelerated dramatically [nasa.gov], from 1.5 mm/year through most of the 20th century, to 2.5 mm/year in the 1990, to 3.9 mm/year in the last decade. And yes, even the prediction about the Northwest Passage [wikipedia.org] turned out to be right.
But hey, don't let reality get in the way of your politically driven lies!
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You can go back to the 1890's and Svante Arrhenius paper On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground which most modern models are derived from. He later wrote Worlds in Making were he explored the role human activity and volcanoes had in CO2 emissions, although his conclusions about increased CO2 and higher temperatures are very naive in todays standards and knowledge.
I doubt anyone can argue his papers were "politically driven" with a straight face.
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I can relate to at least one of their complaints. (Score:2, Informative)
They said they had been told they were not qualified to take part in this broad discussion of the climate crisis, were spreading doom and were not impartial.
In previous discussions on SD, when I've argued that scientists making any claims need to have their data open to the public so that I, as an individual, can look at the data and draw my own conclusion, I've been pointedly told a few times that they have no obligation to do that because I just am not smart enough to analyze the data and would cherry-pick it to argue against their findings.
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Well that makes a lot of sense. If your findings aren't very persuasive, that is.
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But that's the whole point. I'm not even able to have any findings because I'm not given the data under the guise that I'm not a scientist. So these scientists' claiming that "they're not qualified to take part in this broad discussion" hits the same nerve.
That's what science is for (Score:2)
No one is objective or rational. If you think you are, that proves how irrational you are. That just isn't how our brains work. We're irrational creatures.
The whole point of the scientific method is to compensate for it and let us still reach objective, rational conclusions. It doesn't matter whether you're objective, because of course you aren't. What matters is whether you follow the established process. If you follow it correctly, your conclusions will be valid. Challenge someone for not following
Being emotional means they care. (Score:2)
Claiming your opponent isn't rational enough isn't evidence of their failure. It's just a personal attack when there is no way to refute what they claimed.
Should science be based solely on emotions? No, but we're humans too. And the things that make us feel will drive us to act. You know... 'intrinsic motivators' versus all the money, power, etc (extrinsic motivators).