These Climate Scientists Are Telling You What They Really Think

Researchers explain why they feel frustrated, angry, worried, and helpless in the global warming debate.

A climate scientist expresses some of her feelings about the climate debate.<a href="http://isthishowyoufeel.weebly.com/this-is-how-scientists-feel.html">Joe Duggan</a>/IsThisHowYouFeel.weebly.com


Angry. Worried. Frustrated. Anxious.

Such are some of the words that Australian climate scientists use to express their feelings about the dysfunctional climate debate (which, in Australia, has recently seen the repealing of a carbon tax, a chief objective of the current Liberal Party prime minister Tony Abbott). Their writings appear on a new website, entitled “Is This How You Feel?,” run by Joe Duggan, a master’s student in science communication at the Australian National University’s Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. Reached by email, Duggan explained that he “wanted to give scientists the chance to step away from the dry data and clinical prose that laypeople find so hard to engage with.”

Here are some particularly striking emotional expressions from the researchers, expressions that the climate “skeptic” blogger Anthony Watts has said make him want to “hurl”:

I feel a maelstrom of emotions.

Life would be so much simpler if climate change didn’t exist.

I am infuriated. Infuriated we are destroying our planet.

I often feel like shouting…But would that really help? I feel like they don’t listen anyway. After all, we’ve been shouting for years.

It makes me feel sick.

I feel betrayed by our leaders who show no leadership and who place ideology above evidence, willing to say anything to peddle their agendas.

We have so much to lose.

And, perhaps most memorable of all:

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.

You can read all of the letters here. People often allege that scientists can’t communicate, but as these letters show, that’s not really true.

When they’re actually speaking or writing in the language that they use with other scientists, then yes, scientists can seem incomprehensible. But when they’re speaking simply as people, freed up to express emotions, they share thoughts and feelings that we can all instantly understand.

“This is not the only way to communicate climate change, but it is one way,” says Duggan. “We need to kill apathy through death by a thousand cuts. Maybe this can be one cut.”

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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