Scientists need to face both facts and feelings when dealing with the climate crisis | Kimberly Nicholas

I was taught to use my head, not my heart. But acknowledging sadness at what is lost can help us safeguard the futureOver the course of my career, the climate crisis has changed from something only experts could see – reading clues trapped in frozen air bubbles or statistical patterns in long-term data sets – to something that everyone on Earth is living through. For me, it has gone from being something I study to a way that I see the world and experience my life. It’s one thing to publish astudy on the hypothetical impact of increasing temperature on California ’s people and ecosystems; it’s another to feel my stomach gripped by fear as my parents flee a catastrophic California wildfirecranked up by longer, hotter, drier summers.Bearing witness to the demise or death of what we love has started to look an awful lot like the job description for an environmental scientist these days. Over dinner, my colleague Ola Olsson matter ‑of‑factlysummed up his career: “Half the wildlife in Africa has died on my watch.” He studied biodiversity because he loved animals and wanted to understand and protect them. Instead his career has turned into a decades-long funeral.As a scientist, I was trained to be calm, rational, and objective, to focus on the facts, supporting my claims with evidence and showing my reasoning to colleagues to tear apart in peer review. I was trained to use my brain but not my heart; to report methods and statistics and findings but not how I felt a...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Climate change Environment Science Mental health Biodiversity Wildfires Sea level & wellbeing World news Conservation Source Type: news