Tears for the climate (or to boost their social status?)

The Tear Stained Flogs of Climate Science

The unstoppable Tony Thomas has collected the tears of climate scientists the world over as they wallow in their self-inflicted heartache. For anyone who hasn’t come face to face with the raw emotional PR power of a crying scientist, check out Quadrant.

In particular, this new study

The $2.5 million dollar study of The Emotional Labor of Climate Scientists

.. let’s get back to the psyches of Australia’s top warming spruikers. Geographers Professor Lesley Head (Melbourne University) and Dr Theresa Harada (Wollongong University) have published a breakthrough paper in the peer reviewed journal Emotion Space and Society. It’s called “Keeping the heart a long way from the brain: The emotional labour of climate scientists”.[4] This includes insights about climate-panic people’s “emotional labour” from “feminist perspectives” in which the scientists combat “a strong climate denialist influence”. The authors, straight-faced, found that our climate scientists use emotional denial to suppress the consequences of climate change. Guilt-free, they can then continue “extensive use of long-distance airplane trips throughout a scientific career”.

The authors accept, no questions asked, that 33-50 per cent of the world’s petroleum and over 80 per cent of coal should be left […]