Why is most climate research fear-driven? Or is it the folks that interpret that science that make it so to get clicks?
No other science field does this. You don't see "lab mice will come steal your wallet after new experiments fail" in bio research.
The discourse would be more effective if we stick to the facts without end-of-world proclamations.
Because people are afraid of the climate collapsing but they aren't afraid of mice stealing their wallets.
I don't think this is unique to climate research, I can imagine headlines, "Ground shakes beneath Mt. Rainier, alarming scientists," or "Ebola spreads unconstrained in Africa, alarming scientists."
It's fear driven because it might kill people. Unlike something along the lines of, "Mars mission fails as rocket explodes." That's sad but not necessarily causing harm across the population.
The reporting of astronomical objects is very fear/clicks driven when they find something that will come "close" to the earth.
With climate, there are the occasional "not as bad as we thought" articles when we get some new knowledge about a particular system, but the majority of it is fear driven as it's mainly bad news.
The ocean generates 50 percent of the oxygen we need, absorbs 30 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions and captures 90 percent of the excess heat generated by these emissions.
Are there any clathrate-gun [1] style hypothesis that predict the entire gas exchange system could fall into runaway collapse? I'd love to read up on them, if so.
Slow changes, a return to a Cretaceous-style climate, etc. are a very different story than an "overnight" exponential and unstoppable Venusification of the planet.
Slowly rising sea levels in Miami vs one day you wake up and can't breathe anymore. Very different situations.
Why is most climate research fear-driven? Or is it the folks that interpret that science that make it so to get clicks? No other science field does this. You don't see "lab mice will come steal your wallet after new experiments fail" in bio research. The discourse would be more effective if we stick to the facts without end-of-world proclamations.
Because people are afraid of the climate collapsing but they aren't afraid of mice stealing their wallets.
I don't think this is unique to climate research, I can imagine headlines, "Ground shakes beneath Mt. Rainier, alarming scientists," or "Ebola spreads unconstrained in Africa, alarming scientists."
It's fear driven because it might kill people. Unlike something along the lines of, "Mars mission fails as rocket explodes." That's sad but not necessarily causing harm across the population.
> No other science field does this
The reporting of astronomical objects is very fear/clicks driven when they find something that will come "close" to the earth.
With climate, there are the occasional "not as bad as we thought" articles when we get some new knowledge about a particular system, but the majority of it is fear driven as it's mainly bad news.
https://www.earth.com/news/unprecedented-collapse-panamas-oc...
The ocean generates 50 percent of the oxygen we need, absorbs 30 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions and captures 90 percent of the excess heat generated by these emissions.
Are there any clathrate-gun [1] style hypothesis that predict the entire gas exchange system could fall into runaway collapse? I'd love to read up on them, if so.
Slow changes, a return to a Cretaceous-style climate, etc. are a very different story than an "overnight" exponential and unstoppable Venusification of the planet.
Slowly rising sea levels in Miami vs one day you wake up and can't breathe anymore. Very different situations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/climate/pacific-cold-wate...
Somehow I get the feeling if they used the word 'mass' instead of 'blob', a lot more readers would take the subject seriously.
Its a common word used for large areas of ocean water of anomalous temperature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob_(Pacific_Ocean)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_blob
Blob is perfectly good word, and much more precise in this case than 'mass'.
https://archive.ph/fccxa