I am increasingly convinced that climate scientists withhold information vital to understanding how dire Earth’s climate situation really is.
I’m not a Doomer member, but this popped up and I felt like contributing an outside perspective. That’s what this comment is, so feel free to discount it if this isn’t my place to say such things…
Scientists care about doing good science (yes, not all are completely competent or uncorrupted, but I digress). At the end of the day, many do want to improve the world, but few are going to be interested in assuming the mantle of saving it. That may not be best way for the world to work, but it’s just the way people work – we specialize and trust to society the other undertakings.
Scientists have been doing the science, you can read journal articles published during the 19th century that establish the causal link between atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate warming. As time has gone on, those studies have accumulated and warnings from the scientific community have grown more numerous and more dire. They’re just scientists, that’s all they can do.
Frankly, I’m a little surprised this community has failed to recognize their own kind in the wild; there are few people more convinced that the world is ending than climate scientists. My advice to you, dear reader: Go after politicians who ignore the warnings. Go after entitled elders who don’t give a rat’s ass about the future generations. Do not go after scientists for merely doing the same thing as you: spreading the word and hoping for sympathetic ears.
I’d frame it along the lines of: Scientists only talk about what they can prove.
This standard is higher than the opposition, which will publish “shower thoughts” as “evidence”.
If you talk to scientists (off the record) about what they think is likely the case, that’s where you get more dire commentary. They’ve been trained to hold back, nothing nefarious… but also not helpful in the current media climate.
Thank you. Yours may be a less cynical view concerning publicly available scientific thought.
It occurs to me that more realistic study results can lead to fewer funding opportunities.
There’s also the error bars.
Scientists will determine that the temperature will rise by between 1°C and 6°C. That’s a big range. Climate change is complicated and it’s impossible to account for all of the variables.
To the scientist (and their colleagues) they’ll know that 3°C is most likely, and this type of paper reads like a dire warning… but when the news breaks, it goes. One of two ways:
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“1-6°C is a huge range, scientists must not know what’s going on. What does this even mean?”
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“Scientists report that temperature will rise by at least 1°C, the UN Council on Blah Blah says that we should keep under 1.5°C…”
It’s maddening, really. Most of the scientists I know are doomers.
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You can’t blame them. Anyone with a “view” - despite being backed by scientific study - is deemed a crackpot by the masses that don’t (and refuse to) understand anything that goes against their belief.
They do it to prevent a panic, but all it really does is reinforce the beliefs of the deniers that nothing is wrong.
I don’t know if they’re withholding it as much as people just blatantly ignore it? Climate change has been documented as an issue since well before the 60s 🤷♂️
This stuff is like Malthus: we know it will be true at some point, but we do not know when, and 99% of humanity is unconcerned until the situation is too bad to fix.
I don’t think climate scientists are the ones suppressing it.
I don’t think it’s suppression from the scientific community. It seems like over-moderation of results in order to ensure future funding for further research.
Oh, like the Little Ice Age ending in the late 1800’s from when Climatologist start their temperature charts That average global temp hasn’t risen in 20 years Artic ice while it has thinned has become far more expansive Antarctic ice has also expanded in general Polar bear population has tripled in the last 20 years
Yes, it seems that there is solid data that polar bear populations are increasing.
It is false that polar bear populations have grown.
Hard to have conclusive insight when there is no data on over half the polar bear populations Though the groups there is data shows overall increases over the 70 years of monitoring
