‘We have emotions too’: Climate scientists respond to attacks on objectivity

Climate scientists who were mocked and gaslighted after speaking up about their fears for the future have said acknowledging strong emotions is vital to their work.

The researchers said these feelings should not be suppressed in an attempt to reach supposed objectivity. Seeing climate experts’ fears and opinions about the climate crisis as irrelevant suggests science is separate from society and ultimately weakens it, they said.

The researchers said they had been subject to ridicule by some scientists after taking part in a large Guardian survey of experts in May, during which they and many others expressed their feelings of extreme fear about future temperature rises and the world’s failure to take sufficient action. They said they had been told they were not qualified to take part in this broad discussion of the climate crisis, were spreading doom and were not impartial.

However, the researchers said that embracing their emotions was necessary to do good science and was a spur to working towards better ways of tackling the climate crisis and the rapidly increasing damage being done to the world. They also said that those dismissing their fears as doom-laden and alarmist were speaking frequently from a position of privilege in western countries, with little direct experience of the effects of the climate crisis.

The three experts have published a comment article in the journal Nature Climate Change, titled Scientists have emotional responses to climate change too. They said that, at a point when the climate crisis has already arrived and the key questions are how to limit and survive it, their aim in speaking out was to start a discussion about how climate experts across all disciplines can best communicate the urgency needed with the public.

Pretending to be a “robot” is bad science, said Dr Shobha Maharaj, an author of the Nature article from the University of Fiji. “The basic definition of science is to take all parameters into consideration. If you pretend your emotions don’t exist, then you’re not looking at the big picture.”

She added: “Scientists have generally been very cautious with how they communicate, and where has that gotten us right now. I’m not saying that we should just flare up into a frenzy and say ‘Oh my God, this is the end’. But being honest and candid about the truth should never be hidden.”

Prof Lisa Schipper from the University of Bonn, who is also an author of the article, said: “As social scientists, we are very much aware that there is no such thing as neutral or unbiased [science] – you just have to take steps to make sure that your bias doesn’t take over.”

The ideal of objectivity in science has long been criticised by philosophers of science, who argue that it is impossible to attain and not necessarily desirable in any case.

“If you don’t acknowledge your emotions, then where are you going to get that impetus to do better as a scientist?” Maharaj said. “We should not continue to trivialise the fact that we are climate scientists and we have emotions too.”

Schipper said: “If you feel strongly and care, that emotion is also allowing us to continue to study places, people and phenomena that are unfortunately part of the sad destruction of the planet. I don’t think we have the choice now to be unemotional about climate change research.”

Maharaj also raised the issue of privilege. “Being a woman of colour from the global south and a scientist, I’m used to having everything I say pushed back against, so I didn’t at first find the trolling at all surprising, but I did find it concerning. They were saying we can’t be candid about what we think and how we feel because that’s going to just paralyse people into inaction because of the fear.

“This pushback is coming from people in place[s] of privilege, who most likely have had very little to no lived experience on the frontlines of climate change. Climate scientists from the global south, who are on the frontlines, are not going to say that because I’m expressing worry about this we should stop trying to find solutions. In fact, quite the opposite. They say this should be the impetus to actually do more and to work harder.”

Schipper said expressing their fears also guards against the normalisation of the impacts of the climate crisis, from heatwave deaths to people left homeless by floods to falling polar bear populations. “When we’re calling out and saying we’re really worried, we’re upset, it should remind people that these things are not OK.”

The third author of the Nature article was Prof Gretta Pecl, from the University of Tasmania, Australia. She said tracking the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef over 30 years had left her tearful at times, but that the feelings of fear fuelled her to work harder. “We experience distress when faced with impacts of climate change because we care, because we love the natural world and because we want to do what we can to minimise pain and suffering of fellow humans.”

The scientists said their aim in speaking out was to stimulate discussion. “Our point is not to create arguments among scientists but to start talking about these elephants in the room: emotions and privilege,” said Maharaj. “We need to come together and understand each other. The public are looking to us for information and deserve no less.”