Many scientists don’t want to tell the truth about climate change. Here’s why

&gt; There’s something else going on, too: Scientists are shielding the public. They say: “We don’t want people to give up,” or “We don’t want the island nations to feel abandoned,” or “We don’t want people to lose hope.”<p>This is called out by the author, but in my opinion as soon as you start changing the truth to fit a narrative you are not being scientific. If their model says we are missing the mark and we will get warming of 4C then this is what should be reported.<p>What would we say if a scientist doing Alzheimer research said that their new medecine could reduce symptoms by 50% even though their data shows that the reduction is only 10%? Even if it&#x27;s not for money and purely so that patients treated with the medecine would &quot;keep hope&quot; we would call that person a liar.

Naomi Klein has a 2014 book called &quot;this changes everything&quot;, and she makes the following argument.<p>(1) if we don&#x27;t act, everything will change (via climate catastrophe)<p>(2) if we do act, everything will change (via our actions)<p>(3) in the former case it&#x27;s basically just bad things are happening to us, in the latter we have some choice how we change it.<p>(4) as everything will change in any case, conservatism (as in &quot;everything should be conserved as it is&quot;) is no longer an alternative<p>This is, of course, radically compressed, she is more subtle and writes better than I do.<p>I think a massive problem is that this argument hasn&#x27;t spread wider. A lot of people seem to think&#x2F;wish&#x2F;hope&#x2F;imagine&#x2F;copium&#x2F;lie&#x2F;phantasise&#x2F;extrapolate a future basically like our world, just a bit more futuristic, is a possibility. It isn&#x27;t. And telling your children the coral reefs will be okay creates more of such people.

It&#x27;s an unfortunate reality that we&#x27;re going to exceed +1.5C, and we need to begin preparing for the consequences now. &quot;Solving&quot; climate change requires humanity to both prevent further warming AND take care of the people impacted by it. 10% of us could be forced to flee our homes by 2050...<p>In 2019 I founded Distribute Aid to develop community supply-chains that can support displaced people at scale. Since then, we&#x27;ve delivered $25M of aid between 100+ communities in 16+ countries. Given the size of the problem, and the need for rapid growth of successful solutions, we&#x27;re taking a distributed approach that prioritizes local aid groups who are supporting displaced people. Everything is open-source of course!<p>If anyone wants to learn more &#x2F; support us, please leave a comment or email me at taylor &#x2F;at&#x2F; distributeaid.org. :)

&gt; I think climate scientists (and journalists) are underestimating people. If you treat people like children who can’t handle the truth, they will behave like children.<p>He should get outside right now and ask a few people about the topic. People ignore the truth, don&#x27;t care or are actively working against it because it is a Chinese hoax.

&gt; Climate experts talk a lot about “cathedral thinking.” It’s the idea of working towards long term goals — like a medieval cathedral. These goals require vision, shared commitment, and decades, even centuries, of planning. The planners and builders don’t live to see the end product, but future generations reap the rewards.<p>&gt; It’s an inspiring idea. Something maybe only humans could divine. But here’s the thing: cathedral thinking also requires a firm grasp of facts. A cathedral built on fantasy won’t stand for long.<p>&gt; If my son and his friends think the coral reefs will be OK, the reefs are doomed. If he knows the truth, maybe he’ll become a biologist who tries to save them. When people know what they’re up against, many will be sad — I’m sad! — but then they can prepare.<p>This is an example of a perennial mistake where the science behind global warming is conflated with the science behind the consequences of global warming. No one knows if the coral reefs are doomed!<p>Additionally, it&#x27;s ironic to use the term &quot;cathedral thinking&quot; and then talk about the necessity of sticking to the facts. Cathedrals are built by Christians as a way to worship God. As someone who doesn&#x27;t believe in God, I see a lesson here: beleving in something, whether it&#x27;s true or not, can be useful. In fact, it may even be necessary if you want beautiful things like cathedrals. And even us heathens can be inspiried by ideals that are -- being ideals -- unattainable.

The Deep Adaptation [1] movement has been talking for years about how science has been peddling hopium to the masses (my words, not theirs).<p>Thinking of climate collapse with the understanding that these changes will happen well within our lifetime can open up new perspectives that can help individuals - and society at large - better deal with what&#x27;s to come.<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Deep_Adaptation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Deep_Adaptation</a>

One thing that scientists have learned over the last year is that facts and honesty don’t help. There are many financially motivated people trying their best to keep the temperature rising unchecked, and they know that complex, nuanced messages just don’t land at a political level. So you want something to happen, you keep the message consistent and clear.<p>Don’t tell the losing team they should give their opponents more chances to score. If society had wanted straight talking, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

Absolutely agree with this. I see this juxtaposition between calls for basically civilization-ending extreme measures to stay below 1.5 and others saying 1.5 is already a certainty and will end us all, and it just ends up making me tired and not care about climate change anymore because nobody&#x27;s talking sense on what should and could be done.

<i>The real question, he said, is whether we overshoot 1.5 C by a little bit and come back down, “Or whether we go blasting through one and a half degrees, go through even two degrees and keep on going.”</i><p>That&#x27;s not even a question. Of course we&#x27;re going to go blasting through 1.5C. And we&#x27;re going to keep accelerating. We haven&#x27;t even come close to pretending to try to make a difference.<p>I have absolutely no idea what messaging is most appropriate to convey that. We&#x27;re still stuck on trying to convince people that anything is happening at all. A minority of people, to be sure, but a minority controlling a significant fraction of the world&#x27;s wealth (and, not coincidentally, a wildly disproportionate fraction of the world&#x27;s energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions).<p>To my mind, the fact that we&#x27;re looking at 4-5C by the end of the century isn&#x27;t even the worst part. I&#x27;ll be dead by then. But right now, today, we&#x27;re having battles over really obvious and simple scientific facts, where the overwhelming evidence is on one side and we still can&#x27;t make progress. That goes well beyond climate change. It shows up in every aspect of American culture. That&#x27;s making a lot of lives much worse, today, right now.

Climate change suffers from lying and politically motivated influence. Lets just look at the science itself.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Representative_Concentration_Pathway" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Representative_Concentration_P...</a><p>RCP6 isn&#x27;t happening because we absolutely have gone into renewables, hybrid and ev cars, etc.<p>From link on RCP8.5: &quot;Since AR5 this has been thought to be very unlikely, but still possible as feedbacks are not well understood. RCP8.5, generally taken as the basis for worst-case climate change scenarios, was based on what proved to be overestimation of projected coal outputs.&quot;<p>8.5 and 6 are not happening, therefore climate change is not going to result in any sort of catastrophe. Fantastic news, so why the lying?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Geologic_temperature_record#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:All_palaeotemps.svg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Geologic_temperature_record#&#x2F;m...</a><p>If you look at examples of climate change representation, they near universally will always use RCP 8.5 as the prediction. Like the graph above, why the lying?<p>The models have been out long enough. We know we are actually following somewhere between 2.6 and 4.5. We have been doing a great job migrating away from carbon. We won&#x27;t even be peaking similar to the peaks every 150,000 years.

I get why some people are trying to stick to the 1.5C thing, but it’s the role of scientists to just give it to us straight. We rely on that.<p>Additionally, I think it is actually better that they express the situation as-is (getting worse, faster) because the public isn’t going to change unless things are dire. There’s so much social and economic inertia that nothing is going to change until it absolutely has to. By voicing the reality that we’re going to shoot way past 1.5C, maybe that will start to raise more alarms.

The article and comments here use the editorial &quot;we&quot; as if the biggest emissions offender China (double the USA in 2021 [1]), is going to bow to global peer pressure and start sacrificing industries and fortunes in order to cut their emissions by half or more.<p>We know that won&#x27;t happen unless &quot;we&quot; collectively stop relying upon China for our toys and necessities, which might happen through a grassroots movement if a few 100 million global citizens suddenly become luddites and&#x2F;or agrarians.<p>Call me gloomy, but I think the only event that will dramatically slow human-accelerated climate change in the next 10 years will be a global economic collapse.<p>[1] = <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;270499&#x2F;co2-emissions-in-selected-countries&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.statista.com&#x2F;statistics&#x2F;270499&#x2F;co2-emissions-in-...</a>

Ironically, as terrifying as the climate news is, I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s what&#x27;s going to do us in.<p>Increasingly, I think the delegitimization of political institutions (which failed to prevent this predictable calamity) is going to be the business end of the stick.<p>It can seem weird to draw a line between our wobbling democracies and climate change, but when you recall that <i>institutions derive their legitimacy from their ability to deliver repeatable results</i>, and the opportunity to deliver (climate) results of any sort is diminishing, I imagine it will essentially stretch and then snap the overton window.<p>Soon is the time of monsters.

How can we sensibly prepare ourselves as individuals for the challenges that lie ahead? Anyone got articles on this topic?

&gt; Climate experts talk a lot about “cathedral thinking.” It’s the idea of working towards long term goals — like a medieval cathedral. These goals require vision, shared commitment, and decades, even centuries, of planning. The planners and builders don’t live to see the end product, but future generations reap the rewards.<p>We&#x27;re living in the MBA&#x2F;enshittification society where its all about pumping next quarters numbers to dump the stock and profit, even if it ruins the company in the long run. These are the kinds of leaders that we&#x27;re the best in the world at producing.<p>EDIT: I forgot a shout-out to regulatory capture and rent seeking behavior that makes it difficult to get anything done at all.

My son is 2.25 years old (and honestly, I <i>absolutely can&#x27;t wait</i> until he is old enough to have conversations about science with me).<p>I won&#x27;t hold back. I will certainly ask him if he is ready to discuss a topic that he will likely not like the truth of, and that I feel it is only fair to be honest with him, and that I am here to support him if it is upsetting.<p>At least, that&#x27;s what I think <i>now</i>. When you see your own kid get upset, it is REALLY hard to stay the course.

One set of facts, climate science, tell us the reality of what&#x27;s happening to our environment. But another set of facts, communications and psychology, tell us what messaging will get people to put forth the greatest effort at combating the problem.<p>What good are principles if the cost of adhering to them is an increase in actual pain, suffering, death, and destruction? Say whatever needs to be said keep people from giving up.

I get &quot;We’re sorry, the page you requested is currently unavailable.&quot; Tried three times.<p>Edit: Works if I proxy it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;12ft.io&#x2F;proxy?&amp;q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wbur.org%2Fcognoscenti%2F2023%2F10%2F03%2F1-5-degrees-celcius-un-climate-change-report-barbara-moran" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;12ft.io&#x2F;proxy?&amp;q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wbur.org%2Fcognos...</a>

I almost didn&#x27;t click on this... it turns out the scientists are just as depressed by the news. I&#x27;m not surprised that 1.5C is overly hopeful. Frankly, it looks like geoengineering may be more viable&#x2F;profitable&#x2F;necessary than currently discussed.

I think the messaging needs to improve if you want buy-in from the public. 1.5 doesn’t sound like a big number, and I’d wager that a single-digit percentage of Americans could translate that to it’s Fahrenheit equivalent.

Does anyone know if the coral reefs will migrate to cooler waters? Maybe that’s not feasible in a timely fashion given current locations and continental shelfs? Seems like humans could help them out in that case.

Idk, I saw a lot of takes from people I know from IRL in 2020&#x2F;21 where the moment 100% containment seemed like it wasn&#x27;t an option people said &quot;why try anything at all? what happens, happens, if your grandma dies she dies.&quot; even though vaccines looked promising but weren&#x27;t generally available yet... even with these promising percentile &quot;solutions&quot; very close, if the solution isn&#x27;t 100% effective people seem to give up.<p>I think if you&#x27;ve ever been around depressed or emotionally overwhelmed people or just people generally you see this kind of all or nothing thinking is not just common but prevalent.<p>I&#x27;ve always been against paternalism historically but the last few years have provided a fair amount of evidence that it might be a valid tactic.<p>I used to be ideologically against cohersive power as well but persuasion often doesn&#x27;t come from well reasoned argument, it can come from brute repetition, or for addicts of different stripes (drugs, ragebait, social media, personality) persuasion seems like a dead end.

So is the gist here that it&#x27;s actually far far worse than we are being told?