Some climate scientists get angry: A a supernova of stupid or not?

The New York Times writes:

Evidence on global warming is piling up. Nations aren’t acting. Some researchers are asking what difference more reports will make.

“We’ve had 26 Conference of the Parties meetings, for heaven’s sake,” he said, referring to the United Nations global warming summits. More scientific reports, another set of charts. “I mean, seriously, what difference is that going to make?”

It was this frustration that led Dr. Glavovic, 61, a professor at Massey University in New Zealand, and two colleagues to send a jolt recently through the normally cautious, rarefied world of environmental research. In an academic journal, they called on climate scientists to stage a mass walkout, to stop their research until nations take action on global warming.

Predictably, many researchers balked, calling the idea wrongheaded or worse — “a supernova of stupid,” as one put it on Twitter. But the article gets at questions that plenty of climate scientists have asked themselves lately: Is what we’re doing with our lives really making a difference? How can we get elected officials to act on the threats that we’ve so clearly identified? Do we become activists? Would we sacrifice our credibility as academics, our cool composure, by doing so?

For scientists of many kinds, the coronavirus pandemic has fueled the sense that scientific experts and political authorities are uneasy allies at best, that distrust and misinformation have weakened society’s capacity to work toward complex collective goals.

These thoughts were percolating as Dr. Glavovic worked alongside nearly 270 other experts on the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that assesses climate research. The new report, all 3,675 pages of it, was issued on Monday and concludes that global warming is outpacing our ability to cope.  

Each I.P.C.C. assessment is a huge, multiyear effort by researchers and representatives from 195 governments. Every line, every chart, is fine-tuned to ensure it is backed by evidence. The hours are long; the work is unpaid. The panel, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, has given global climate talks a crucial grounding in scientific fact. But its reports deliberately do not prescribe policies for governments to enact. They just lay out the options.

They are all the same: Climate science denier tactics, just like 

tobacco industry tactics, just like chemical industry tactics, 

just like Christian nationalist tactics, just like Republican Party tactics

What they and others like them all have in common is ruthless use of dark free speech to (i) attack inconvenient knowledge, (ii) attack the messengers trying to warn about inconvenient knowledge, and (iii) sow confusion and doubt about inconvenient knowledge. When big money and power is involved, lies, deceit, unwarranted doubt, slander and social division works every time as far as I can recall. 

Early on, climate science deniers vehemently disputed the science, arguing that (i) climate change was not real, (ii) climate scientists were a cabal of communists and Democrats hell-bent on enslaving Americans and destroying our economy, and (iii) the science was not persuasive and too uncertain. Talking points (ii) and (iii) are still popular with Republican elites and climate science deniers. They have successfully delayed taking action against climate change. 

In American politics it is ~25 times harder (my estimate) to get something done than it is to block it and do nothing. Unifying and building is hard and difficult. Dividing and destroying is easy, and for the elites at the top ~0.1%, incredibly power and wealth accumulating. That's just the way our political system was set up.

For decades, cigarette companies successfully (i) fooled tens of millions of Americans into a false belief that cigarettes did not cause cancer, and (ii) stopped government from taking serious action in defense of the public interest.

For decades and continuing today, oil and chemical companies successfully (i) fooled tens of millions of Americans into a false belief that plastic would be recycled, and (ii) stopped government from taking serious action in defense of the public interest, including an increasingly plastics-polluted environment. Today those same companies continue to block government action on climate change by quietly funding disinformation. These people are expert at sowing doubt, confusion and divisive false beliefs. 

For decades, Christian nationalists and the Republican Party have adapted and used the same tactics to deceive tens of millions of Americans into believing all kinds of divisive lies, slanders and crackpottery in their lust for power and wealth for the elites at the top. They have applied the full weight of their propaganda efforts to denigrate and neuter climate change as an important issue. This comes at the expense of, e.g., democracy, truth, the public interest and the rest of us. 

That is not to say that the tactics of deceit, division, doubt, slander and etc., are new. Those tactics have been in use for centuries.

Climate scientists: Consider their situation and weakness

The NYT correctly articulates the immense weakness of honest people honestly trying to inform and warn: Would we sacrifice our credibility as academics, our cool composure, by doing so? That is the key question. If climate scientists become activists, they would lose even more credibility in the face of a vast barrage of anti-environmentalist deceit, lies and slanders that target their activism. The scientists would be smeared as mendacious, self-serving political partisans and traitors. 

Climate scientists cannot be activists without losing their credibility. But by God, oil and chemical companies, other polluters and Republican ideologue extremists can be activists and they claim 100% credibility, even when they are lying through their teeth. See the major power asymmetry here between unifying and building vs. dividing and destroying (polluting for profit)? 

Once again, Republican hypocrisy and double standards are front and center. Polluters could not care less because there is so damn much money to be made.

Right now the Republican Party is dead set against taking climate change seriously in terms of government action. If anything, they may be open to the private sector and unregulated markets doing whatever they want, including polluting even more. The do-nothing Republican anti-climate science attitude is made crystal clear in the only statement about climate in a recent Republican policy document: 

The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.

That is all that corrupt Republican ideologues are willing to say. That's it.

Republican elites are obviously not serious about climate change. In their open contempt of climate science and climate scientists, Republican elites do not even bother to distinguish between weather and climate. The issue is at best a silly joke for them, but far more likely a threat to the profit interest of some of their major financial donors (oil and chemical companies, etc.) and their own government-hating dogma.