nuclear-news

GR: When I introduced David Wallace-Wells’ story last week, I mentioned that some prominent climate scientists criticized the article because of its warning of disaster and doom. Those scientists believe that gentle persuasion instead of an emergency declaration is the correct way to deliver the climate-emergency message. They are afraid people would be so overwhelmed by the truth, they might simply give up.

By 2100, the coolest months in tropical South America, Africa, and the Pacific are likely to be warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century. Photo: Heartless Machine

There are other reasons that scientists soften their warnings. Gentle persuasion is resistant to the most intense forms of ridicule by oil-company sponsored climate-change deniers (whew). And gentle persuasion isn’t criticized by other scientists (who learned at their mentors’ knee true science is never certain). However, I disagreed with the arguments for gentle persuasion…