Guest essay by Eric Worrall
These poor climate scientists are sacrificing everything in their passion to save the world, but nobody cares.
‘I’m profoundly sad, I feel guilty’: scientists reveal personal fears about the climate crisis
Feelings of powerlessness and despair for the future are evident in letters written for a six-year ‘passion project’
Graham Readfearn @readfearn Email
Sun 8 Mar 2020 06.00 AEDTLast modified on Sun 8 Mar 2020 08.19 AEDT
In 2014, Joe Duggan started reaching out to climate scientists to ask them a question: how did climate change make them feel?
“I was just blown away when I started getting the letters back,” he says.
Duggan, a science communicator at Australian National University, set up a website and starting publishing the mostly handwritten responses.
“[Professor] Katrin Meissner was one of the first, and her letter really hit me. It was so … unscience-y. Almost poetic.”
“It makes me feel sad. And it scares me,” Meissner wrote.
“It scares me more than anything else. I see a group of people sitting in a boat, happily waving, taking pictures on the way, not knowing that this boat is floating right into a powerful and deadly waterfall.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/08/im-profoundly-sad-i-feel-guilty-scientists-reveal-personal-fears-about-the-climate-crisis
Gee, if only the climate scientists had tried a little harder, we might have listened to them.
Having said that, if you suspend disbelief and just look at the words, some of the descriptive imagery is actually pretty good. Obviously “floating into a waterfall” should have been “floating towards a waterfall”, so they need a bit of help with their writing technique, but when I closed my eyes I could really see that boat, kind of like one of the depressing scenes from the apocalyptic nuclear war story “On the beach”.
When the climate bubble finally collapses, with a bit of training some of the most emotionally expressive climate scientists might be able to make a decent living writing fiction.
They seem to ignore the fact that plants produce food and oxygen, O2 molecule for CO2 molecule if I recall my chemistry. No big deal I suppose.
“… make a decent living writing fiction …”
But aren’t many of them already writing science fiction?
Fiction, yes. Science not so much . . .
More like “sciency” fiction.
Thanks Eric, I asked on a previous post today, what scientists on this site would make of this Guardian article.
I was shocked that presumably highly educated people, scientists, did not seek to simply question whether or not the scenarios being promoted in the science community were accurate. I guess ‘follow the money’ applies here now.
I am not a scientist, nor am I highly educated, but by simply taking the time to do some research, I came to the conclusion that non of this had been thought through. CO2 as a pollutant, wind and solar renewables as an answer, temperatures rising along with sea levels, polar bears on the brink of extinction (along with koalas apparently), coral reefs bleaching and the Arctic ice and glaciers disappearing. Have I left anything out?
The numbers of Australian politicians speaking out against alarmism is on the rise. I hope that the numbers of ‘climate realist’ scientists speaking out will increase too, at least those who have retired.
The scientists who spoke of their grief regarding CAGW, I just want to shake some sense into them! Open your eyes folks you’re being paid for your high level of education…oh that’s right, you’ve sold out.
Aw diddums. All guilty progressives should stop breathing out polluting CO2, right now!
Don’t believe that’s a representative sample at all. What about all the others? How many tossed the request in the garbage because they didn’t have any “feelings” about climate change? The vibes coming from some quarters is that there are a significant number of scientists who are skeptical, but are afraid to voice their concerns, for obvious reasons.
I suggest that the ‘handwritten replies’ are a deliberate gimmick to give an impression of sincerity and authenticity to “an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative “. *
The whole thing is just another propaganda exercise.
Susan
* acknowledgement to WS Gilbert
Very few people who claim to feel guilt are actually guilty of what they claim to be guilty. Very, very few people admit to feeling guilty about sins they have really committed, and in fact cite excuses for the sins.
Justin Trudeau is not responsible for the past treatment of Canadian Natives. He is responsible for the shabby treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould. For which sin did he apologize? Not the one he committed, and still denies committing.
Hey I like that, good point. Trudeau never apologized for his ethics breaches, for his profligate government spending, for his stupid ‘the budget will balance itself’ statements, for his groping, for trying to slip a get-out-of-jail-free-card for SNC Lavalin in a budget bill–only for things done by others. I’m starting to see a possible similarity to the psychopath, as in ‘Dead man Walking’; his own misdeeds are simply not comprehended as real.
Remember that Brian Mulroney, when his misdeeds resulted in his party going from majority to 2 seats in one election, still never changed his tone of superiority; it must be part of the political mind.
I see a group of people sitting in a boat floating right into icy waters and suddenly everything around is frozen and they need rescuing…
Oh wait, we saw that already a couple of times with these clowns…
Waterfall analogy reminds me more of ‘A Handful of Dust’ as Tony Last’s expedition companion sets off in the wrong direction for the ultimate time leaving Tony to the mercy of Mr Todd and endless Dickens readings. We are all Tony Last, betrayed and then condemned to a hideous repetitious fate.
Had we conducted science with feelings in the past we would all be sitting here in the dark and these idiots would be wringing their hands over some other imagined hobgoblin.
That’s kind of what they are doing now. Making a good living writing poor fiction.
Good thing they didn’t say “… floating over a waterfall”
JPP
As carbon dioxide is an invisible, odourless and tasteless gas, why not say that the scrubbers have been
invented,tested and installed in all coal fired power plants. We need more CO2 not less.