Above, straight talk from Glaciologist Eric Rignot.
And how does that make you feel?
Last week’s piece in Esquire on the existential dread of climate scientists has touched a nerve and gone viral. The takeoff point for the piece was last year’s tweet from Jason Box –
As the article has gone viral with 60 thousand plus shares so far, its come up in a lot of pro and con comments among scientists I know and respect. A lot of them take exception to the article’s gloomy tone.
I mentioned the piece in a post last week, and pointed out that “..A lot of journos picked up on the “f’d”, but forgot the “if””.
I think both Jason and I believe that doomsaying is not useful or helpful – but there may be a lesson in communication here.
The Esquire piece quotes expert Jeffrey Kiehl – “You reach a point where you feel—and that’s the word, not think, feel—’I have to do something.’ ”
Getting in touch with that emotional energy is a key to the solution.
Ultimately, its a relief to have your Doctor get real and say, “It’s cancer, and its bad….”
Doesn’t mean its all over, just frees up a lot of energy to stop worrying get to work.
And might inspire you to finally quit smoking.
Eric Holthaus expands on the piece in Slate.
But the real success of the Richardson piece is the way he depicts the internal struggle Box deals with on a daily basis.
“But I—I—I’m not letting it get to me. If I spend my energy on despair, I won’t be thinking about opportunities to minimize the problem.”
His insistence on this point is very unconvincing, especially given the solemnity that shrouds him like a dark coat. But the most interesting part is the insistence itself—the desperate need not to be disturbed by something so disturbing.
In a moment of candor I hadn’t seen before, Box revealed to Richardson that he’s already preparing for the worst:
“In Denmark,” Box says, “we have the resilience, so I’m not that worried about my daughter’s livelihood going forward. But that doesn’t stop me from strategizing about how to safeguard her future—I’ve been looking at property in Greenland. As a possible bug-out scenario.”
Despite what the Esquire article says, Box, whose work I have previously covered on Slate, is a bit of an outlier among climate scientists. Most of them aren’t as willing to talk about the plausibility of nightmare scenarios. Still, his frankness on climate change is welcome.
Ultimately, what scientists are after is truth, even if that truth is personally devastating. For that reason, being a climate scientist is probably one of the most psychologically challenging jobs of the 21st century. As the Esquire article asks: How do you keep going when the end of human civilization is your day job?
I reached out to a few well-known climate scientists for their reactions to the article.
Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University meteorologist whom Richardson quotes, told me, “I would emphasize that it isn’t too late to act, despite the sense one might get from the article. Our only obstacle at present is willpower.” When asked about how many climate scientists struggle with psychological dread over their studies, Mann said, “I honestly don’t know how many of my colleagues reflect on the matter. But those who don’t ought to. What we’re studying and learning is more than just science. It has ramifications for the future of humanity and this planet.”
By far the most engaging response was from Katharine Hayhoe, a rising star in the climate science community after her work engaging evangelical Christians on the issue was profiled in a Showtime documentary last year. Timenamed her one of the 100 most influential people on the planet for 2014.
Hayhoe now lives in Texas, precisely because of its climate vulnerability. Hayhoe said Texas’ “strident political opposition to the reality” makes it “ground zero for climate change,” which her work embraces. “If I personally can make a difference, I feel like Texas is where I can do it.” But she’s quick to applaud Box’s work and doesn’t criticize his family’s decision to relocate.
In the back of her mind, Hayhoe said she has also factored in humanity’s lack of progress on climate change in her family’s future plans. Like Box and his family, Hayhoe also has a bug-out scenario: “If we continue on our current pathway, Canada will be home for us, long-term. But the majority of people in the world don’t have an exit strategy. … So that’s who I’m here trying to help.”
For more honest emoting about climate from scientists, worthwhile to go here.
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How I feel about climate change:
– Dismayed
– Depressed
– Powerless
– Sad
– Overwhelmed-But also-
– Hopeful
– Unwilling to give upI am a scientist mostly focussed on studying precisely how human activities are destroying coral reefs. On coral reefs climate change effects are hugely obvious and very depressing. Huge swaths of coral have died due to heat stress and more will continue unless drastic changes occur.
It is very hard not to feel totally overwhelmed buy the magnitude of the problem and depressed by the extreme apathy of most of the worlds population (it seems) towards doing anything about climate change.
But then there are bright spots of hope:
– Suggestions of political will to actually change emissions.
– Amazing ingenuity from people designing new fuels and engineering clever solutions to counteract emissions.
– Some bits of evidence that the natural world is more resilient than it may at first appear (sometimes).
– Grass roots movements to make lifestyle changes and create community momentum towards sustainable living.I’m not yet willing to give up on a future where humans live lightly upon the planet, and I hope that you are not, either.
All together we can fix this mess. But we do need to try!
Jessica Carilli, PhD Earth Science
Assistant Professor, UMass Boston.
Hi Peter,
About 4 years ago I did a totally non-scientific test using friends and acquaintances as guinea pigs. While they consented to the activity, I’m no longer sure it was a good idea.
I provided a compilation of information from climate scientists and the IPCC in a short (4 page) format and asked them to read it. I pre-selected these folks for their intelligence and education. All of them were aware of Climate Change as a defining threat of our time ( 😉 – I did say they were friends and acquaintances).
After they finished reading, and had a day or so to think about the article I followed up to see how they felt, both about the article and about the issue presented. The results were fairly uniform.
None of the readers felt motivated to take action. In fact most of them felt powerless, and some became depressed. Now, these were strong people, with strong will and above average intelligence. The overall they reported feeling helpless against an oncoming disaster.
Most climate scientists that I’ve spoken to about this have concerns as well, although they’re better informed and equipped to know that action is still possible.
I thoroughly understand Jason’s feeling expressed in that tweet, I saw it go by when he did it. I’ve succumbed to similar things in the past. That said, his willingness to be outspoken, as well as your own efforts to inform people have made Jason a public figure, which places him on a tight rope walk between informing people and sapping their will to take action. From his reaction to the resulting media blitz I imagine he understands this.
All of us who are making efforts to communicate and inform have to walk this tight rope to some degree. I face it every time I edit the PCN feeds. I’m glad you and Jason have been so good at it, and want to encourage you to keep it up. You’re not alone!
Hi Donal, I would say become an example of the changes that need to be made. To tell people “there is a problem ” and then offer no solutions is of course depressing. Take part in environmental projects, install PV, get an electric car, join the Transition movement, buy local, grow your own, make sure any money you have invested is in non exploitative or polluting business, personally I do what I can to withdraw support from the current economic and political paradigm.
It’s always going to be a bottom up shift, because those at the top are totally invested in the current destructive behavior. The changes that need to be made can be fun, life is short, to spent it feeling helpless is pointless and it lets those working hard at destroying the biosphere have free reign!
I feel sorry about the many people, who worry about the future of their progeny. They have every reason to be concerned.
They all look at their governments and at the energy industry. Many of them do not trust energy companies, their national governments, and the efforts of the UN to save Earth from Overheating and from destroying more and more of Natures countless species.
Twenty previous “Conferences of the Parties” or COP’s have virtually not produced any sustainable rescue strategy for preventing the continuing warming of Earth. Instead, Earth is getting warmer steadily.
The only success, which this counterproductive institution has accomplished, is an ever-increasing number of paid conferees and of providing ‘celebrities’ with getting more global exposure.
Despite gloomy reports from the UN’s IPCC, only the same old ideas of adaptation and mitigation are being promoted. The best these concepts can do, is a modest slowdown of advancing global warming. Instead of supporting effective countermeasures, the conferees have invited demands by less developed nations for financial assistance, which they increasingly support. Unfortunately, such sudden increase in annual expenses for saving a deteriorating Earth will make any rescue efforts so much more difficult.
A new strategy for rescuing Earth and for returning climates of the 1960s sustainably, has not drawn much needed and urgent attention, yet.
The proposed new rescue strategy is scientifically and technologically sound and is based on only seven (7) energy conversion technologies. Most of them need further technical advancements to fully understand these processes and for industrially hardening them.
Once these new technologies have been developed fully, private investors will support them readily. After all, market sizes and reliable, annual revenues can be predicted reliably.
Read my book “Climate Change Reversal. It has only 60 pages, is available as paperback or as digital version at Amazon and is written for politicians, journalists, and concerned citizens with average technical knowledge.
“…All of us who are making efforts to communicate and inform have to walk this tight rope to some degree
“…the desperate need not to be disturbed by something so disturbing.
“…Our only obstacle at present is willpower.
“…Getting in touch with that emotional energy is a key to the solution.
That’s why it’s going to have to get worse before it gets better.
Question – did you provide actions which they could take? (beyond the token efforts everyone knows about; recycle, go solar, etc.) I mean an avenue which would express an iron will to not put up with this any longer. There are only ~500 people in this country who have the power to make legally enforceable policy. Make it easy for them to feel “forced” to take action – the single biggest policy action which would shift things is Hansen’s Tax-and-Dividend, a very steep carbon tax, combined with trade sanctions against any trading partner who doesn’t pass their own Tax-and-Dividend. Wallets ultimately trump Ideology. How do make those 500 (House, Senate, Supreme Court, Executive) feel compelled? We already know – think Vietnam, Civil Rights. Million-People marches on DC which will forbid the normal conduct of business there, until T/D is passed, or the jails are full, or both. Clearly, reason has gone nowhere towards compelling these 500 to take action. One more letter to your congressman is another opportunity of effort that has been squandered on “hope”.
I thought the Esquire article was a rare example of honesty about the issue.
I disagree with the notion that despair is unhelpful. It’s only with a loss of rose-colored glasses that we can see the problem in all its complexity, and really understand what needs to be done to address it.
The widespread hopium that exists, to me, is like a doctor treating a fatal illness with drugs that mask the pain. They make the patient feel better, but it’s not going to cure them, and all it’s really doing is deceiving them. Whereas, if the patient is told the full depth of the problem, they might seek out more aggressive measures of treatment. It’s not human nature to just give up. We’re always going to fight, even if the cause is hopeless.
I just feel that if the entire world despaired about climate change – we might actually do something meaningful about it. Instead, we’re getting stories about how it’s not much of a problem, or it will be really cheap and easy to solve it, or the free market will handle it with some limited guidance, or technology provides the answer, or we can keep growing forever with renewables. These are all false messages. They might address a small portion of the problem, but they won’t do what we really need to do. Instead of meaningful actions, we’ll get weak and non-binding agreements at the world climate summits and modest actions from governments. I’d say, tell those representatives to imagine aliens are attacking and we have virtually no chance of saving humanity, and see what they do then.
I personally despair mostly, however, that so few others can see this. I want them to despair, too, not because misery loves company, but because it might actually get them off their collective arse, and without that, it’s truly hopeless.
Despite my own personal despair, and with the understanding that the probability of a collective, global reversal in attitudes is exceedingly low, especially in a meaningful time frame to address a problem that will continue to grow well after, and even if, all emissions sources have been neutralized, I’ll always support anyone who suggests we need to change to address our issues. I personally have taken several steps to lower my footprint, and will spend the rest of my life attempting to lower it further. Despair hasn’t changed my own individual will to do what’s needed, and I don’t think I’m unique about this. It doesn’t matter that my own actions have a virtually meaningless effect on the problem as a whole. The right to do is still the right thing to do, and if everyone else acted the same, I’d have an actual reason to hope.
Personal efforts to lower one’s carbon footprint can help you get through the day, but the truth is, there are far too few people globally who can make any difference to climate by such actions. So I always ask myself – is the goal to feel noble? Or is the goal to halt climate change? I’m more interested in the latter. Getting people off their collective arse, as you say, is the start, but to do what? Voluntary enviro-friendly actions will do little. Strong global, legally enforced (forced!) policy action must be the next step if technology is to have enough impetus to make a difference.
I said I realize my own actions are virtually meaningless, and I also said why it’s important to still do them, at least to me. The right thing to do is still the right thing do, regardless of the outcome, and if everyone else (or at least most everyone else) did the same, I’d have a lot more reason to be hopeful. Sure, I probably do make myself feel better by doing these things, but what do all humans do? We all make ourselves feel better constantly. I’d rather plant and tend a garden than drive a Lamborghini – call me selfish.
I have to agree with your last sentence, despite personally abhorring big brother. Still, individual action, if widespread enough (although that’s unlikely given current attitudes), can contribute as well.
I hear you. And yes, my response to the knee-jerk reaction (not you, Jimbills!) “well what if everyone believed personal action was hopeless?” is this – If I could personally, impossibly, affect EVERYONE’S carbon behavior, you’re darn right I’d have a very different behavior and strategy! But I don’t, so please take down the straw-man and get real”. Even if my actions inspired the actions of dozens, or hundreds of others to lower their carbon footprints, it would still amount to nothing in the face of climate. I do, I hope, have the ability to educate people on the scale of the problem and the future we face, and hopefully motivate the actions that’ll get POLICY enacted, and that from the grass roots. I congratulate Peter’s fantastic job of education, and John Cook, and others. I do have a strong astrophysics background and can do my part in my own arena.
We want smart people somewhere to let us have our cake and eat it too. To save us from ourselves with better technology, while we continue to overpopulate, scour the landscape for diminishing resources, and never pay the piper. I think only a shock-and-awe carbon tax will slow that juggernaut.
I had two reactions to the article. The first one was a redoubling of the distress and fear that has come to be a regular part of my psyche. I could not sleep the night after I read it, and I was morose into the following day. But there was a deeper more lasting effect which began to take hold, and it had to do with the fact that there was no actual new information for me in the article, but there was a new way of talking about the feelings that accompany this information. I think it’s very important for people to understand the emotions of the scientists. I’m a tv director by profession, and I can tell you that in getting any story across you can never rely on facts and graphs. People respond to character and human emotion. I think the fact that we’ve been shielded from the feelings of the scientists is perhaps what’s made this seem…unreal, not urgent, hard to connect with, esoteric. These feelings they were talking about are a new frontier, and as I started to see the article get passed around talked about, the more I have begun to see that it’s an opportunity for a lot of people to admit that this bothers them profoundly, and that they’d like to see something done.
Climate change has been an uncomfortable thing to talk about socially for a long time. I’ve suffered in silence, so to speak, keeping my distress inside. But in the last few days I’ve had many conversations over dinner and coffee, and there’s a growing willingness amongst my friends to admit that they too are coping with distress and depression over something that no one knows how to talk about. Maybe until now.
All of us who comment here are steeped not only in awareness of what’s wrong, but also in what can be done to fix it. If you are like me and you’ve been scouring the corners of the web, looking for answers and solutions, keep engaging your friends and loved ones and pointing them towards proof of the problem and all of the incredible solutions within our grasp. As well as the small things that they can do.
We need to change practically every aspect of our lives to tackle this problem, so this awareness will need to filter down to every individual and nag at them throughout the day. If we can penetrate people’s psyche’s like this, then we’ll reap the collective benefits of an entire population contributing in small ways.
Yes! Climate scientists need a crash-course in how to connect with both their reason and their real emotions at the same time, and express both simultaneously. Stephen Schneider was good at that, and he’s sorely missed here.
While I applaud these individuals for speaking openly, I really wish journalists would get feedback from more scientists, instead of just the usual people (Michael Mann, Katherine Hayhoe, et cetera). Not that I have anything against them, just that there are thousands others, and only focusing on those few in the public eye contributes to the notion that there are only a handful of climate scientists who feel so concerned about the issue.
I agree that we need to hear from a broader cross section, and I actively seek out “not the usual suspect” scientists.
How is it that we (I mean the white-hats) skipped the 2nd phase of the process and went straight to despair? What happened to the righteous anger? The biological utility of anger is to empower protecting our values when under dire threat. There’s a certain softness is far too wide a segment of the environmentalists. Healthy anger channeled into a focus on what actually can turn the tide (vs. destructive tantrums) is exactly what is needed.
There are rumors of politicians who are sympathetic but fearful to take any action. Fine. Give them the perfect excuse for action – that they were “forced” into disobeying their corporate overlords by uncompromising popular demand, in the form of mass protests in the Capitol. Even 100 years after the Civil War, reason and patience went nowhere towards improving the rights of minorities. It took more – it took some backbone.
What I personally find demoralizing and despairing is the unimaginative same old / same old, the assumption that given more patience and come-let-us-reason-together, politicians will finally see the light and do right.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
Who says we’re not angry?
There were several climate marches all around the world with hundreds of thousands of participants in September of last year, and look at COP20 in Lima. The only conclusion is that we need a LOT more people to be sufficiently angry -and- despairing.
To this point, unfortunately, DOG’s comment above is the likeliest scenario. We most likely need to have our butts kicked backwards and forwards for the masses and the powers that be to wake up. But, my point was that we’re not going to get the masses to wake up before then by telling them pleasant stories of hope, and that’s what we’re getting in a variety of different ways (and often from the powers that be).
People need to be frightened – they need to feel horror and despair. There’s nothing wrong with that, as we’re not very likely as a collective to react sufficiently to an existential crisis if we’re constantly being told it’s an easily manageable one, or that we can stay roughly the same if we just tweak the market, support renewables, and develop technology.
Blied was spot on with: “We need to change practically every aspect of our lives to tackle this problem, so this awareness will need to filter down to every individual and nag at them throughout the day.”
There’s a lot of looking at the “white hats” and finger pointing within that minority, when the “white hats” aren’t the problem here. It’s the majority, or those not worrisome/despairing/angry enough, and the larger powers influencing the stories going to that majority.
We need to rebuild society almost completely. The way we have gone over the last 50 years is the reverse of where we need to go.
We have gone to excess consumption, we need to minimize.
We have gone for throw away, we need durable.
We are globalizing everything, we need to localize.
We are growing the population to a position of considerable overshoot. One way or another this will be corrected, either we freely use contraceptives or we can get mass starvation.
We are growing inequality, we need much greater equality.
A few wind turbines and a couple of solar panels are not going to fix everything. WE need to rethink everything we do.
As individuals we have considerable influence, not so much at the ballot box anymore but our dollars still yell loudly. Stop buying useless stuff that you do not need (I am getting better at this one). Grow your own produce even if it is only a tomato plant on the balcony (Have planted a few fruit trees long tome to productivity). Try to leave the car at home and catch public transport or ride a bike. Drought tolerant gardens (hey I even actually do this one).
Here we go again!
I’m angry, actually. And also despairing. And cynical about humanity’s actual intelligence level.
I agree
I meant, I agree with Jimbills. People who are already comfortable and ideologically inclined may refuse to buy any but local produce, and grow tomatoes etc, but nowhere remotely near enough to make any difference. Sorry, but if you don’t agree, take it up with Nature. Her laws are not negotiable. We need EVERYone to change behavior, and we need to pull back much of our existing CO2 from the atmosphere to boot. And that will ONLY happen with global policy action immediately.