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
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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.
The head quote about ‘stewards of grief’ was from a person who, IMHO, needs, seriously, to seek psychiatric counselling – at the very least for Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.
“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?”
Tell her to, “Buck up Little Buckeroo. The planet is cooling and the grasses are fine.”
Even if the planet did warm, seagrasses will simply move to higher latitudes. Duh.
The border between Homarus vulgaris (the common lobster) and the spiney or rock lobster (Panuluris) habitats is roughly at about Cape Hatteras on the US East Coast. However, this boundary moves north and south as the ocean goes through its 60-year cycle of warming and cooling. For the same reason, many other species move as the oceans cycle.
Maine lobstermen have know for 100s of years that lobstering goes in 60-year cycles, with lobsters most scarce at the peaks and valleys of the ocean cycle and most abundant during the times in between. Lobsters have evolved to enjoy the most common temperature which is the time between the peaks and valleys.
I believe 2012 was quite a warm year and a record year for lobsters . they wait for warming in the spring to move back inshore when the water warms , which they did early and in large numbers . but they are soft shells and a little less valuable that early . also numbers were so large prices were low . a few years later waters were abnormally cool and the catch was way down .
Our meditation task for tonight is: my climate and ecological grief, how to come to terms with it.
So long as you don’t talk, everything should be fine ;-).
Remember Kimberly, Billy Crystal said “looking good is better than feeling good”. So get busy.
PS: I hope Billy didn’t hurt your feelings.
Diversity or diversity dogma (e.g. color)?
The other half is at risk with all the attention focused on that little invisible molecule that comprises 0.04% of the atmosphere. The large animals have no chance against that campaign focus.
Statistically nearly all species that have ever lived are extinct. What’s left is a rounding error, but still wonderful, diverse and amazing. Trying so hard to be depressed about this incredible biosphere is clearly a psychiatric disorder.
First off, Ola Olsson is a professor of economics, so what does he know about species diversity and loss in Africa? Second, Kimberly Nicholas is a professor of “sustainability science” (what sort of goofball title is that?). If you ever see job with the word sustainable or sustainability in it, you can be sure the person is a SJW, probably a liberal arts major, and definitely NOT a scientist. Eric mischaracterized these two as “climate scientists “, which they clearly are not.
If any of you out there reading WUWT have a job with the word “sustainability” in it, resign immediately and escape while you still can.
Most of the humans and almost all of the animals alive at my birth are dead. This is not a tragedy, it is life.
”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?”
That she’s insane?
From the above article: “Ola Olsson matter‑of‑factly summed up his career: ‘Half the wildlife in Africa has died on my watch.’ “
Hey, Ola, do you have any facts to go with that claim . . . as a matter of fact?
All the wildlife in Afrika is going to die. All of us are going to die. Everyone who has read one of Griff’s stupid comments is going to die. No one gets out alive.
And anyone who dies after reading one of Griff’s comments will die with a little lower IQ.
According to Wikipedia, amongst Amphibians, Birds, Reptiles, and Mammals in Africa, only the following have been confirmed to have gone extinct in the last 60 years.
I’m not a scientist, but I would wager that there were more than 8 species of Amphibians, Birds, Reptiles, and Mammals in Africa 60 years ago.
“90% of the seagrasses [..] are slated to be killed by warming “.
Seagrasses reportedly evolved in the Late Cretaceous. They will just love any warming they can get.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-71354-0_1
The problems that the natural world has had have not been caused by climate that has changed very little but rather loss of habitat. For example there is the county where I live. 200 hundred years ago it was mostly ranch land or wilderness. Now at least half of it is either urban or suburban. Mankind is gradually trying to pave over most of the county.
“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?”
Not that any of them have actually died due to warming, but they’re “slated” to, just you wait!
The planet certainly doesn’t need emotional morons like these protecting it.
That woman needs a strong dose of lithium.
Beware when purported scientists start getting emotional.
To understand a bit better about African wildlife, poaching, humans etc I would highly recommend the documentary “Trophy”. Not for children or for the hand wringing environmentalists. Excellent nonetheless.
To take the quote from Blood Diamond “TIA” (this is Africa). Anyone who has lived there will understand what that means.
For anyone interested in a great conservation story it is worth looking for a second hand copy of “The White Rhino Saga” (1973) by Ian Player – the late brother of the golfer Gary Player. It is saddening to see the good work of conservationists being undone by poachers and incompetent and corrupt governments and useless local authorities.
Another stupid quote from a wildlife programme. “Cheetahs are now extinct in 27 African countries”. They clearly don’t understand what extinct means, or that there is no significance to counting cheetahs in human polygons called countries.
In how many UK gardens are hedgehogs now extinct?
I am nearly 60 years old. Roughly 50 million people die on Planet Earth every year.
That means approximately 3 billion people have “died on my watch”, or nearly half of the average global population over that time.
90% of seagrass might die off?
and theyre already moaning?
lord or whatever spare us
lock em up
Anyone who has lived in different African countries and been observant would have noticed that it is not drought and floods or any sort of climate change that has been the biggest threat to wildlife. It has been a selfish, greedy and incredibly short-sighted two legged animal that does not give a damn.
More like 99% of the wildlife has died in Africa under her watch. The offspring died too. Generations happen. But no one gets out alive.