The scientists aren't journalists. Convince a politician to start planning for national security considerations. Tell them how it'll affect supply chains. Frame it in a way that literally anyone who has a vested interest in doing something would care about.
It is easier said than done. Politicians do not like to be disturbed by some pesky experts. Mentor Pilot discusses 2025 D.C mid-air collision[1], and finds the most disturbing reason for it: experts tried to escalate issues with too much traffic for years, but they were repeatedly told that it was "too political", so, in other words "just shut up and deal with the traffic, don't bother congressmen and congresswomen, they are too important to be bothered with limits of possible stemming from physics or engineering".
Politicians thought (and some think to this day) that climate warming is "too political" to listen to experts. Most of them will think that Atlantic current is too political, till it stops.
It is easy to say "convince a politician", but it is hard to do. Politicians think politics, and you have to be a genius among politicians to transform a game field, so some concerns of scientists became a political issue that is not possible to ignore. Geniuses among politicians as as rare as in any other discipline, the most of them will just play existing games, without even thinking of rewriting the rules of the game. BTW, when they try to rewrite, the boring old "play by the rules" might start to look pretty good.
Politics is the hardest unsolved problem the humanity faces. We could send humans to the Moon, or it seems increasingly likely we can create an AGI, but we can't make politicians to listen to the reason.
> but we can't make politicians to listen to the reason.
You're stopping too early. Politicians exist for one reason only, to get elected. If they don't get elected, they're not a politician, so everything they do is is selected with that as their fitness function.
So why won't they listen about climate change? Because the public doesn't want to be told they have to make their lives slightly worse. There are "politicians" in the UK who constantly warn about climate change. Guess what? They won't get elected.
In other words, you're blaming the symptom, not the cause. The general populous is the real reason.
I suppose they could refrain from injecting their feelings into it. The science doesn't change if it is presented as simple information and not as a warning.
So they should be more like "Atlantic currents might shut down, we'll see what happens and if it'll be good or bad" when they already can tell the effects will be pretty bad? Wouldn't that be basically burying the lede?
You'd have to ask the one who raised concern with this in the first place. What is apparent, though, is that "good or bad" is contrary to science. Science seeks to understand what is, not how you might feel about it. It is interesting that things went there.
Theoretically speaking, yes. But practically science is very interested with good and bad, because the goal of science is to bring as much good and to avert as many bad as possible. There is abstract science, there is fundamental science, which are studying things far from our everyday concerns, but even they are not free from "good and bad": ITER has all its funding, because we believe that fusion can bring a lot of good to us. Scientists cannot just forget where the money came from, and what the goal was attached to them.
But when we speak about climate science, or something else "close to Earth", then it is impossible to imagine how they may not be concerned with good and bad.
Theoretically speaking, science is looking for a truth, and any truth, but practically it seeks useful knowledge, and if you look into any scientific article, it starts with an argument that the results presented in the article are useful, and not just the authors of the article think so, but there are (were) other people too. Undergraduates are explicitly taught to write articles like that.
> it starts with an argument that the results presented in the article are useful
Except here the appeal to emotion suggests that it isn't useful. The results would be useful on their own without having to fabricate additional information to make it useful otherwise.
It is understandable why scientists are getting wrapped up in their emotions, but anyone in science is intended to learn how to separate logic and emotion. That is what the education system is for. That breakdown we're seeing leads to complex communication issues.
So medicine is not a science because it's concerned with what's "good" and what's "bad" for someone's health? I find this kind of argument principally flawed.
Many sciences are concerned with the consequences of human actions and it's hard if not impossible to describe these in meaningful ways without applying some criteria for what outcomes are good (desirable, positively evaluated) and what outcomes are bad (not desirable, negatively evaluated).
Besides, there is a whole area of science that maybe is more like engineering but is clearly worthwhile, too, even if it's not strictly a natural science only. For example, urban planning might not be a science in the strict sense but it's clearly important and involves scientific studies.
If policy makers can't get from climate scientist's an evaluation of the potential consequences of climate changes, then who else would produce these for them? Should they just make it up on the fly?
> So medicine is not a science because it's concerned with what's "good" and what's "bad" for someone's health?
It is concerned with understanding health. It is unable to decide what is "good" or "bad" as that is in the eye of the beholder. That is why medicine presents the options gleaned from the gained understanding, leaving the individual to decide for themselves what is "good" amid all the different tradeoffs. The universe has no fundamental concept of "good" or "bad". It is something humans make up. It is curious that someone who seems to have an interest in science doesn't realize that.
You're nitpicking. Medicine is concerned with what's good and bad for someone's health. Medical doctors literally advise their patients on that and evaluate the effects of actions with respect to what's good and what's bad for their health. What's good and bad for someone's health is simply one form of instrumental goodness. Other sciences evaluate in similar ways, though they are perhaps concerned with other aspects of what's good and bad. Climate scientists are not concerned with what's good and bad for mankind in some abstract philosophical way, but they should without a doubt lay out good or bad consequences of climate change. If the temperature sinks by 10 degrees Celsius in Northern Europe, that would be a bad consequence for the affected countries.
It's false and somewhat naive to claim that such evaluations play no role in science, they are a crucial part of many sciences. For instance, they're needed to find worthwhile subjects of study. Not everything is theoretical physics.
> Sometimes, the outcome of a scenario will be unambiguously tragic for humanity.
Whether or not it is tragic depends on the beholder. Some people are quite happy to watch the demise of humanity. Science is only interested in what is. How you feel about it is up to you. Certainly scientists are going to have their personal feelings about the science. They are but simple humans, after all. But those feelings are no more useful than your arbitrary feelings.
> Science seeks to understand what is, not how you might feel about it. It is interesting that things went there.
No, it's not interesting at all: the clamouring for climate scientists to not use words like "bad" about increased severity and frequency of forest fires, flash floods, droughts, etc is just the expected outcome of boring old corruption. There's really no other reason for someone to object to calling tornadoes "bad" than them or theirs getting paid to say it.
“Good” or “bad” is not contrary to science. For example scientists will evaluate the risks vs. benefits of a cancer treatment to determine if the benefits are worth the risk. They will do the same for vaccine efficacy etc.
Scientists are also humans with their own value judgment which is sometimes very flawed (see e.g. Richard Lynn and his race science) and sometimes with revolutionary insights that expands our shared empathy for the world around us (see e.g. Jane Godall).
Often when I hear a statement like this I see it as a thought terminating cliché. The value judgement of a scientists is often disregarded only when it is contrary (or inconvenient) to the speaker’s argument.
Who then should inject their feelings? Journalists don't care because it's too abstract, politicians don't care because it won't happen in their term, business doesn't care because there's no money to be made, and the people don't care because of all of the above people telling them to ignore it.