Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate scientists want to be “stewards of grief, to hold the hand of society as we enter the unknown space of the climate crisis“.
Scientists need to face both facts and feelings when dealing with the climate crisis
I was taught to use my head, not my heart. But acknowledging sadness at what is lost can help us safeguard the future
…
Bearing witness to the demise or death of what we love has started to look an awful lot like the job description for an environmental scientist these days. Over dinner, my colleague Ola Olsson matter‑of‑factly summed up his career: “Half the wildlife in Africa has died on my watch.” He studied biodiversity because he loved animals and wanted to understand and protect them. Instead his career has turned into a decades-long funeral.
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My dispassionate training has not prepared me for the increasingly frequent emotional crises of climate change. What do I tell the student who chokes up in my office when she reads that 90% of the seagrasses she’s trying to design policies to protect are slated to be killed by warming before she retires? In such cases, facts are cold comfort. The skill I’ve had to cultivate on my own is to find the appropriate bedside manner as a doctor to a feverish planet; to try to go beyond probabilities and scenarios, to acknowledge what is important and grieve for what is being lost.
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It has taken me a long time to come to terms with my climate and ecological grief, but swimming through it is the only way forward. One role environmental scientists can play is to be “stewards of grief, to hold the hand of society as we enter the unknown space of the climate crisis,” as my friend Leehi Yona so beautifully wrote when the IPCC’s 1.5C report launched. As scientists, we have had much more time observing the decline of what we love. We are further down the line of where we all must get to as a society, facing hard truths and still finding ways to be kind and resilient, to do better going forward, to get through this together. We still have so much we love at stake that is worth fighting for.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/24/scientists-facts-feelings-climate-crisis-sadness
Whenever I read something like this I get this kind of yech feeling, like I’ve just received an unexpected and unwanted random hug from a stranger. You know, the quick look to see if they have any obvious indications of mental or physical illness, the quick check to make sure your wallet is still in your pocket.
Let us just say I’m not in a hurry to hold your hand and let you lead me, Kimberley.
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What “climate crisis”?
The one inside their heads. !
Not much else in there !!
It’s not a crisis, it’s a management challenge.
Strange how these people never tell us what a climate crisis is.
“I was taught to use my head…” Really? Someone has let you down very badly, Kimberly!
‘I was taught to use my head’ – as in a nutter (UK slang).
She is using the capacity she has, cannot blame her for that.
.
Does that count as child brutality ?
A hammer or mallet is much more effective.
“she’s trying to design policies to protect are slated to be killed ” slated to be killed which is code for “someone made a WAG that they could die based on a model”
Warning: An exaggerated sense of importance on display.
Wouldn’t it be better if climate scientists stuck to doing science and held back on telling us how worried they all are?
The never ending media articles would be a whole lot shorter too.
Why do scientists think they have to write policy for every problem they can program into a simulation?
Griff time to come with polar bears, not Africa, but why care about ? 😀
Foff, nincompoop!!
Feelings have been overriding climate facts for at least back to IPCC second AR.
Meh,what a bone head.
She reminds me of that other poser,who proclaimed from the stage”Every time I clap my hands,a child dies in Africa”.
To which an audience member yelled “Then stop clapping you Wa##er”.
Also what an idiotic comment from her “dear colleague” of course over half the wildlife are going to die over a 10 year?period…Nature is not cute nor cuddly..
Gee most everyone alive today will be dead by 2100..Oh the horror.
Can we set aside a “nature reserve” for the Cult of Calamitous Climate?.
We must free them to live the lifestyles they demand..for us.
Not evil carbon,no evil fossil fuels,no evil byproducts..like those lovely synthetic fabrics these righteous twits all seem to wear..
I wonder what they imagine their “Magic Wonder Battery” will be made of?
Funny thing here,our progressive comrades insisted lunatic asylums were demeaning and too expensive,perhaps we just replaced them?
With cities?
OMG! I just realized, 99% of all wild life has died since I was born.
I hadn’t gotten to your post when I wrote mine. A little longevity leads to outliving most other animals.
Ditto. Had not scrolled enough and posted the same.
Well you only have 9 years left According to occasional cortex
… and it’s your fault too.
And it was on “your watch” Alan! Feel very bad and ashamed, or something, that you didn’t use your omnipotence to stop the slaughter!
At least you didn’t say it coldly and matter-of-factly to send chills down the spine of poor Ms Nicholas.
Any chance of sharing with us the list of all animals in continental Africa and highlighting those that are no longer with us? With a statement like that, this list should be ready to hand.
We lost the northern white Rhino. That’s one.
One is on the board….we need a 2 here…anyone?
Truth that died by climate change.
Whatta ya mean “we“, white man?
“stewards of grief, to hold the hand of society as we enter the unknown space of the climate crisis”
It would bring a tear to a glass eye.
Queue up the Beatles: “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”
Sorry. Cue up the Beatles.
FINALLY a scientist who knows exactly how many species there are in Africa and how many are left. Would she please share the numbers with us!
But first, provide the “only” definition of specie.
IPCC
“Thousands of people from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC. For the assessment reports, IPCC scientists volunteer their time to assess the thousands of scientific papers published each year to provide a comprehensive summary of what is known about the drivers of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks.”
https://www.ipcc.ch/about/
Is the highlighted bit true? Does the IPCC include such papers as those frequently referred to by Pierre Gosselin over at NoTricksZone? Or just the papers that reinforce the IPCC’s message?
The actual science sections tend to be ok if sometimes a bit miss-focused, it’s the summary for policy makers that goes off the rails scientifically.
So any paper that “denies” anthropogenic cause is pushed aside at some point?
Not completely. The IPCC will use individual sentences from ‘skeptical’ papers if those few words don’t counter the narrative. The original writer will then be listed as a ‘contributing author’ to beef up the number of scientists involved.
OK is not perfect. The science sections usually include enough information to make someone who is casually aware of statistics know exactly how much doubt there is. True believers read them differently however.
…click on the “Donate” button…
It actually sounds to me like she is calling for environmental protection, a field with plenty of evidence based facts how measures can help, very unlike climate protection measures.
I’d like some of the AGW trollettes to comment..
…. so we can LAUGH even harder. 🙂
There is only griff from the Guardian, known as Egriff there. The Guardian climate change blog “expert” is a retired geography teacher called rockyrex who will not comment on here because he considers WUWT to be part of the crankosphere! He’s one smug b@stard. Ask HotScot about him.
Another is Erik Frederiksen, a Californian who quotes his heroes Michael Mann, James Hansen, Eric Rignot and Richard Alley.
rockyrex and Erik Frederiksen won’t appear on WUWT because they would be destroyed. griff is griff. Don’t you just love him? 🙂
Losing half the wildlife in Africa? The locusts are doing very well there. Thank you very much.
Leftists, they are all on anti depressants. Glad I do not have such a view of the world, they only see the bad.
There was a recent study that correlated political beliefs with treatment for anxiety and depression. The results were about what you would expect.
You know, in my lifetime, probably 3/4 of the animals alive at the time of my birth are now dead. 99% if you count the insects.
Certain fish, whales, tortoises and other long-lived animals are all that is left from my childhood. All these others were born since (and I am not yet 60).
Oh, was she implying species extinction? I believe she is full of something awful if she thinks we have lost half of the specie in her lifetime. Where are the bodies?
““stewards of grief, to hold the hand of society as we enter the unknown space of the climate crisis,”
Who asked Kimberley woman to have any kind of authority? But then again, this is what delusion looks like.
I’m sure 95% of Class Animalia dies in Africa every years, irrespective of how hard she tries, the raw disapointment must wrack her soul.
Activist-scientists. All activism but no real science.
Charlie Brown gets it right on this one: “Good grief!”
I remember not that long ago when environmental scientists decided that the only way to protect the African Savanna was to cull Elephants in the 10’s of thousands.
https://www.volunteersa.com/elephant-culling-in-the-1980s-leaves-elephants-impaired-today/