We know there are scientists who WILL tell the truth about climate change — such as David Ho (@8606bdb4), Peter Kalmus (@d574690a), Ruth Mottram (@ad951bfd), Zeke Hausfather (@985ba769), Katharine Hayhoe (@960c7f1a), Brad Rosenheim (@4f7ee2c7), and more — but sadly, there are many others who will NOT level with the public about the crisis we are in. 
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"Many scientists don’t want to tell the truth about climate change. Here’s why."

In March, the United Nations released a massive climate change report. The biggest takeaway: Global warming will soon pass the oft-mentioned target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Honestly, as a climate journalist, that totally freaked me out.

That “1.5 C” number comes up a lot in climate change conversations. That’s because at around 1.5 C the climate starts hitting points of no return. Like, almost all the coral reefs die. Ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland get scary wobbly. Permafrost starts to thaw faster than a popsicle on a hot sidewalk. Rising seas drown island nations.

But the UN scientists were pretty clear: 1.5 C is coming.

“Almost irrespective of our emissions choices in the near term, we will probably reach 1.5 degrees in the first half of the next decade,” said Irish climate scientist Peter Thorne, one of the lead authors on the UN report.

Why is overshooting 1.5 C inevitable? Physics. There’s a nearly linear relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the average global temperature. More CO2 in the sky means a warmer world. It’s like pouring water into a bucket — keep pouring it in, eventually the bucket overflows.

Our carbon bucket will overflow in about nine years; by the early-to-mid-2030s, we’ll be living in a post-1.5 C world. Unless we quickly cut carbon emissions to zero. Last I checked, that’s not happening.

After this report came out, something weird happened. Unlike the blunt Dr. Thorne, most climate scientists (and journalists) didn’t change how they publicly spoke about 1.5 C. Admitting defeat could risk “demotivation” said Pascal Lamy, the commissioner of the Climate Overshoot Commission. Scientists kept saying things like: “We need to act now to stay below 1.5” or “it’s getting harder, but still technically possible.”

Technically possible? Like, if aliens appear with magic tools that fix climate change?

I felt like I was being gaslit by climate scientists. I wanted to know what was going on. So, I called Kristina Dahl, the principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

She told me that staying under 1.5 C is now “largely unrealistic.”

But, she added, “like other climate scientists, I'm not ready to say that we have to give up on this goal.”

I asked her why. Why wouldn’t she just give it to me straight? And she told me a story that I found revelatory...
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I'm out of room here, but I urge you to click on the link and learn more about why some scientists continue to downplay the true threat of climate change.

FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023/10/03/1-5-degrees-celcius-un-climate-change-report-barbara-moran

#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency