3 ms·

"Yet Washington continues to ignore the problem, or, worse still, to actively impede efforts to address it. How can this be? A possible answer, which seems to

"Yet Washington continues to ignore the problem, or, worse still, to actively impede efforts to address it. How can this be? A possible answer, which seems to be the one that Hansen himself, at least in part, subscribes to, is that scientists are to blame." I don't believe this for a second and blaming scientists for not being clear enough instead of the massive amount of misdirection, misinformation, and flat-out denial pushed in the interest of greed is downright insulting. How can this be? Because those that stood to lose money paid boatloads to convince people that scientists are wrong, to secure politicians' votes via donation, and to generally profit off of the resulting lack of action and coming catastrophe.

tejohnso 8y ago
There's plenty of blame to go around. He has written a paper about what he calls "scientific reticence" and talks about it here[1] as well. Scientists self-censor. It's hard to get a message across when mainstream news is full of hyperbole and you can't even use the word "dangerous" in the title of your paper. Then again, the phrase "biological annihilation" got through on this one [2] describing the sixth mass extinction event that we're in. [1] http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/24/dangerous-scientific-reticence http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/24/dangerous-scientific-... [2] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/05/1704949114.full?ftag=MSF0951a18 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/05/1704949114.full...