Last time, I expressed extreme disappointment that fossil fuel executives had any role in leading the climate meeting COP28. This is a classic example of putting the the fox in charge of the hen house. The issue is easily summed up: Setting aside economic self-interest and other human foibles, it is clear from the comments that the science is not as clear to everyone as it is to me. That’s fair;

In 1986, I was a grad student at Princeton, working in the atomic physics lab of Will Happer. It was at a department colloquium that I first heard a science talk that raised serious concerns about our use of fossil fuels potentially impacting the climate. This was not received well. People asked all sorts of questions, with much of the discussion revolving around feedback effects.

I have had the misfortune to encounter many terms for psychological dysfunction in many venues. Cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect – I have witnessed them all, all too often, both in the context of science and elsewhere. Those of us who are trained as scientists are still human: though we fancy ourselves immune, we are still subject to the same cognitive foibles as everyone else.