The invitation is now open to become WA’s next Chief Scientist

Science and Health

Cook Government is now looking for a new State Chief ScientistCurrent Chief Scientist Professor Peter Klinken AC to conclude his term in June 2025The Chief Scientist provides key advice on science, technology and innovationThe Cook Government is now looking for a new State Chief Scientist and has opened registrations of interest (ROI) for the position.Science Minister Stephen Dawson commended the current State Chief Scientist, Professor Klinken AC, following a decade of service in the role and who will finish up in June 2025.As Chief Scientist, Professor Klinken provides independent advice to the State Government on matters regarding science, technology and innovation throughout the State.This includes advising on the ways in which science and technology assist in the diversification and decarbonisation of WA’s economy, as well as supporting the State’s thriving regions and sustainable environments.Professor Klinken first began his tenure in 2014 as WA’s third Chief Scientist since the role was established in 2003.The role is also crucial in providing advice to government on many of the key priority sectors that support Diversify WA and Future State: Accelerating Diversify WA outcomes.Key responsibilities of the Chief Scientist include:promoting science and technology across government, communities and businesses;inspiring young people, and supporting diversity and inclusion in science and technology fields;representing WA and contributing to national thinking at the Forum of Australian Chief Scientists; andchairing the assessment panels for the annual Premier’s Science Awards.The Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation is coordinating the ROI and appointment process for the next Chief Scientist.The three-year fixed term role will commence in June 2025 (or as agreed). For more information and to register your interest visit: Chief Scientist of Western Australia: Registrations of interestAs stated by Science Minister Stephen Dawson:“The Chief Scientist of Western Australia plays a crucial role in providing important and strategic advice to the Government on matters to do with science, technology and innovation.“On behalf of the Cook Government and Western Australians, I want to pass on our thanks to the outgoing Chief Scientist Professor Peter Klinken AC, a man who has served tirelessly in the role for 10 years and has done amazing work for Western Australia.“I encourage anyone with the relevant experience, achievements and commitment who is interested in taking on this prestigious role to put in a registration of interest.“I know our State has some of the greatest minds available and I am looking forward to seeing who takes up the mantle next at this great time of change and innovation.” Source & references /Public Release. View in full here.

10 Best Books on Guns in America

Arts & Culture, Books

The gun has come to embody many contradictions over America’s history: individual liberty and the police state, empowerment and violence, defense and death. To understand America’s complicated culture of guns is an interdisciplinary pursuit: legal, historical, sociological, economic. The following books are all exemplary attempts at that understanding.Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
One might begin at the Second Amendment, with its disputed meaning and the intentions of the Framers, the inextricable way in which gun rights sought to preserve existing systems of oppression and power, namely slavery, and that still today arguments around guns are inherently racialized. Guns, too, have always been a commodity, and in many ways, the gun industry created gun culture as we know it. One third of adult Americans own a gun. The NRA wields unfathomable political power. And every single day, at the hands of our own inventions, one hundred Americans die, seven of whom are children.
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Dominic Erdozain, One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy, 2024
One Nation Under Guns is a “brilliant and gut-wrenching” history and analysis of America’s gun culture as it has developed since the Second Amendment (The New York Times Book Review). The book opens with a man who is “a pillar of the gun culture,” an ex-Marine and columnist for Guns & Ammo, showing a Dutchman how to shoot a gun: “‘This… is what keeps our politicians from getting rid of the Bill of Rights,’” he says, referring to the semi-automatic rifle. Writer and historian Dominic Erdozain argues that “our interpretation of the right to bear arms has been not merely muddied but contrary to what most of the framers apparently intended.” The book “considers guns from cultural, legal and historical perspectives” in under 200 pages, situating each event in historical context, and examining each word of the Second Amendment; it “is so comprehensive and assured that the moment I finished it, I immediately went back to the beginning and read it again.” (The NYT Book Review) Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads

Pamela Haag, The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture, 2016
It’s too easy to forget that even objects imbued with such political controversy, existential power and cultural deification as the “gun” are also products manufactured, goods—bought, sold and advertised. Pamela Haag’s The Gunning of America corrects “the perception of the gun’s inevitability in American life by showing its history as a commodity invented and then deliberately marketed and distributed like any other widget or household appliance.” (The New Republic). She contends that “the gun industry created, rather than responded to, America’s gun culture,” and “successfully exploited notions of frontier individualism, responsibility, and masculinity” to the exclusive benefit of the bottom line. Haag ascribes the origins of the gun industry to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, illustrating how their business success calcified the American interest in the gun, as it is today.

Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment: A Biography, 2014Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
The Second Amendment is a single, awkwardly constructed sentence of twenty-seven words, yet the history of its sustained interpretation and misinterpretation may reveal some essence of America. The Second Amendment: A Biography seeks to do so through careful historical analysis, depicting the transformation of belief “from defense of the homeland to defense of the home” (LA Times Book Review). Waldman, a constitutional lawyer and presidential speechwriter, insists “that the Second Amendment did not create an individual right to arms.” The book a “readable, often chatty, thoroughly documented recounting of the Second Amendment’s history shows it changing in character as American society changed” (The New York Times Book Review). How does the ongoing debate of this short text reflect an uneasiness at the root of the American identity?

Carl T. Bogus, Madison’s Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, 2023
In Madison’s Militia, Carl T. Bogus shows that “the right to bear arms was not about protecting liberty but preserving slavery.” He argues that “a close examination of the context in which Madison drafted the Second Amendment reveals the text as an offering to white southerners preoccupied with containing slave rebellion and uneasy about losing control of the primary instrument for it, the militia” (The New England Quarterly). Carl T. Bogus is a professor of law emeritus at Roger Williams University, but Madison’s Militia is a history, told with the scrupulousness of a lawyer, “a surprisingly fast-paced account of the events leading up to the Second Amendment” (Jeannine DeLombard, author of In the Shadow of the Gallows).
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Andrew C. McKevitt, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War, 2023
“Andrew McKevitt’s excellent Gun Country… insists on an often neglected fact: guns are a commodity” (London Review of Books). Gun Country “recasts the story of guns in postwar America as one of Cold War and racial anxieties, unfettered capitalism, and exceptional violence that continues to haunt us to this day.” Beginning in the 1950s, after the WWII, the book describes how “young gun entrepreneurs connected American desires and consumer demand with a previously unexploited source of supply: war surplus guns from around the world.” McKevitt, a professor of history, contends that “war made the gun country,” and then war “became a metaphor for understanding it.”
Shortlisted, 2024 Cundill History Prize • One of the Washington Post’s Notable Nonfiction Books of 2023

Jennifer Carlson, Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement and the Politics of Race, 2020Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
Jennifer Carlson, professor of sociology and MacArthur Fellow, “shows how the politics of guns cannot be understood—or changed—without considering how the racial politics of crime affect police attitudes about guns” in Policing the Second Amendment. A sociological study, Carlson interviewed close to eighty police chiefs, and conducted extensive archival research, to dissect the racism that undergirds policing, and hence—the gun debate. She “reveals the troubling racial politics that animate gun laws and legitimize lethal state violence” (Forrest Stuart, author of Ballad of the Bullet). Carlson’s other two books also deal with guns in America: Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline (an ethnography of gun-owners) and Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy (which focuses on gun sellers leading up to January 6th).

Charles E. Cobb Jr, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, 2015
This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed is Charles Cobb’s “richly detailed memoir of his experiences with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s” (The New York Times Book Review). He “describ[es] the vital role that armed self-defense has played in the survival and liberation of black communities,” explaining how non-violence and armed self defense are not mutually exclusive philosophies. Charles E. “Charlie” Cobb Jr. is a journalist, professor, and former activist. In the introduction to the book, he describes his aims well: “In some respects, this book is a way to introduce readers to people and political currents that have never been particularly visible in the history of the civil rights movement… the larger story… is the story of black communities organizing and fighting for change, unwilling to live under white supremacy any longer.”

Alexandra Filindra, Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture, 2023
To understand the state of guns in America requires understanding the history and influence of the NRA. In Race, Rights, and Rifles, Alexandra Filindra, professor of political science, “shows how ascriptive republicanism transforms the right to self-defense—a basic human impulse for survival—into a rallying point for political polarization and a justification for an investment in illiberal democracy,” by tracking the arguments for individual gun ownership over time (Jennifer Carlson, author of Policing the Second Amendment). The book is an “eye-opening examination of the ties between American gun culture and white male supremacy from the American Revolution to today.”

Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives, 2016
On a single day in 2013, ten American children and teenagers were killed by guns. Another Day in the Death of America is the account of this day—when more children died by gun violence than usual, but not by much. Gary Younge is an award-winning journalist and acclaimed author who also happens to be a Brit, “a personable, unusual narrator.” In the New York Times Book Review, the book is described as “exactingly argued, fluidly written and extremely upsetting.” “This is Gary Younge’s masterwork,” says Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger, “you will never read news reports about gun violence the same way again. Brilliantly reported, quietly indignant and utterly gripping. A book to be read through tears.”
Winner of the 2017 J. Anthony Lukas Prize • Shortlisted for the 2017 Hurston/Wright Foundation Award • Finalist for the 2017 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism • Longlisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction

Toni Jensen, Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, 2020
In Carry, Toni Jensen reflects on what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, through snapshots of encounters with gun violence, and yet does so “with a controlled voice like a Philip Glass composition, smooth, meandering yet repetitive” (The New York Times Book Review). Powerful and poetic, Jensen combines the personal and the historical, depicting experiences that are, deplorably, not singular, indeed are endemic to the American experience. “This is America,” she writes, “Everywhere we live, our neighbors may commit gun violence. Everywhere we live, the police may commit gun violence on us or on our neighbors.” “We need more voices like Toni Jensen’s, more books like Carry” (Tommy Orange, author of There There). 
New York Times Editors’ Choice • Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Hong Kong International Optical Fair to open in November Focus on advanced technology and sustainable design

Technology

Over 700 exhibitors from 17 countries and regions to participate from 6-8 November at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
Exhibition reflects four prominent market trends: technology, lifestyle, functionality and sustainability
Concurrent Hong Kong International Optometric Symposium to explore latest breakthroughs in myopia control and prevention
Finalists of the 24th Hong Kong Eyewear Design Competition to be unveiled
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 25 October 2024 – The 32nd Hong Kong International Optical Fair, organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and co-organised by the Hong Kong Optical Manufacturers Association (HKOMA), will take place on 6-8 November at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Under the theme of Seeing is Believing, the Fair features innovative and state-of-the-art eyewear designs and products, bringing together industry players to facilitate new business opportunities.

Last year’s Hong Kong International Optical Fair was a great success

Buyer Registration link: https://tinyurl.com/mwpzh324
Sophia Chong, Acting Executive Director of the HKTDC emphasised: “This year’s Hong Kong International Optical Fair, a long-standing industry highlight for over 30 years, is more international than ever, attracting more than 700 exhibitors from 17 countries and regions. The fair reflects the dynamic evolution in eyewear design and technology. Exhibitors worldwide are aligning their products with key trends in technology, lifestyle, functionality and sustainability to capture expanded market opportunities. This exhibition, which is truly a feast for the eyes, demonstrates Hong Kong’s advantages as an international trade and procurement centre.”
Hong Kong ranks as the world’s third-largest exporter of eyewear and frames. The total export value of Hong Kong’s eyewear, lenses and frames is estimated to have reached HK$19.9 billion in 2023, signalling substantial growth. The smart eyewear sector has emerged as an industry focal point, with the global market exceeding HK$40 billion in 2023 and projected to surpass HK$100 billion by 2029.
Exhibitors from around the globe, including Europe and Americas, such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as Asia such as Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Türkiye in the Middle East, and more, will present their latest offerings at the fair. Prominent Hong Kong brands will also have a significant presence.
This year’s Optical Fair will feature a number of group pavilions, including Mainland China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as the Visionaries of Style and HKOMA Pavilion; along with pavilions from cities in Mainland China, including Danyang in Jiangsu, Jiaojiang in Zhejiang, Shenzhen in Guangdong and Yingtan in Jiangxi.
The Brand Name Gallery, the focal point of the Fair, will showcase over 200 renowned global brands. Other zones will present a broad spectrum of eyewear products, including Smart Eyewear, Contact Lenses & Accessories, Designer Café pavilion, Sporting & Professional Eyewear, Kids Eyewear & Reading Glasses, Lenses, Frames & Parts, Eyewear Accessories, Diagnostic Instruments, as well as Optometric Instruments, Equipment & Machinery.
The 22nd Hong Kong International Optometric Symposium will be held on 7 November. Jointly organised by the HKTDC, the Hong Kong Optometric Association and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, this year’s symposium will focus on myopia control and prevention. Scholars from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Australia, and Germany will lead discussions with industry professionals. The symposium is a pre-approved CPD Programme recognised by the Optometrists Board and attendees will receive a Certificate of Attendance. The Fair will also offer talks and seminars on smart eyewear, functional eyewear, sustainability and other advancements in the eyewear industry.
To foster Hong Kong’s creativity and innovation, the HKTDC and HKOMA will run the 24th Hong Kong Eyewear Design Competition under the theme of Be Bold. Results will be announced during the Hong Kong International Optical Fair. Winning and final entries will be on display at The Forum, Hall 1D during the fair period to showcase Hong Kong’s creativity to international buyers.
Under the EXHIBITION+ hybrid model, exhibitors and buyers can meet online through the Click2Match business matching platform in addition to attending the physical fair until 15 November. Buyers can also use the Scan2Match feature of the HKTDC Marketplace App to scan the QR codes of exhibitors and view product materials, bookmark favourites, browse product information and floor plans, as well as engage with exhibitors before and after the fairs to continue their sourcing journey.
Featured Products Exhibitors at the forefront of the industry are unveiling an array of innovative eyewear products in line with technology, lifestyle, functionality and sustainability trends. Some of the highlighted products are:
Technology：

Solos AirGo™ V – Smart Eyewear Equipped with a camera, Solos AirGo™ V is the world’s first smart eyewear with ChatGPT-4 functionality, and provides instant responses to what you see Solos Technology Limited Product Zone: Visionaries of Style Booth: GH-B26

Reform Eyewear Reform features a new patented flexible frame technology that seamlessly adapts to any frame shape, size, colour or material, suitable for both prescription and sunglasses. This innovation offers endless possibilities for eyewear design, while ensuring safety and comfort. Icare (Hong Kong) Company Limited Product Zone: Hong Kong Optical Manufacturers Association Pavilion Booth: 1E-C08

Lifestyle：

Fashion-Forward Yagioka Eyewear The local design brand Big Horn has launched the Yagioka eyewear line, featuring a modern and refined design that is perfect for fashion-forward people. This eyewear design was a finalist for the USA Accessories Council’s Design Excellence Awards 2024. The Panda eyewear series draws inspiration for its colours and shapes from the beloved animal. Crafted with precision and made from high-quality biodegradable materials, it combines functionality with aesthetic appeal. Winky International Limited Product Zone: Brand Name Gallery Booth: GH-R03

Rosie Allan – A Design for Both Parents and Children Established in 2020, Rosie Allan transcends being just a brand; it celebrates family bonds and unforgettable moments. Specialising in 100% handcrafted acetate sunglasses, the matching parent-child collection symbolises love and togetherness. Rosie Allan Pty Ltd Product Zone: Brand Name Gallery Booth: GH-D07

Luxury Jewellery-inspired Handcrafted Eyewear This Japanese brand merges high-end jewellery design with eyewear, utilising premium materials, such as 18K gold and natural diamonds. Each pair is meticulously handcrafted with a commitment to artisanal craftsmanship and is specifically designed for Asian facial features, exuding elegance. Inon Co. Ltd. Product Zone: Japan Pavilion Booth: GH-B12

Functionality:

Nano Vista Children’s Sports Eyewear Crafted exclusively for kids and young athletes, Nano Vista – a Spanish brand – offers eyewear designed for outdoor activities. It is internationally recognised for safety, meets European EN166:2001 standards and is endorsed by top sports federations. Opticon Ltd Product Zone: Brand Name Gallery Booth: GH-C06

Sustainability:

Sustainable Eyewear Frame Solution The eyewear frames are made from BioCell material. BioCell is a cellulose acetate derived from cotton or wood pulp, certified as biodegradable according to ISO 14855 standards. It contains no industry-standard plasticisers and is compatible with polycarbonate lenses. Eleung Limited Product Zone: Hong Kong Optical Manufacturers Association Pavilion Booth: 1E-D14

Eco-Friendly Nylon and PC Lenses Eco-friendly nylon and polycarbonate (PC) lenses are produced using sustainable materials, reducing carbon emissions during the manufacturing process. They feature high abrasion and scratch resistance and have received multiple certifications. Even in low-temperature conditions, they maintain hardness and toughness, providing excellent clarity and optical transmission performance. Mellan Limited Product Zone: Frames & Parts Booth: 1E-C28

Websites:
The 32nd Hong Kong International Optical Fair：https://www.hktdc.com/event/hkopticalfair/en
Event Details of the Hong Kong International Optical Fair: https://www.hktdc.com/event/hkopticalfair/en/intelligence-hub
The 22nd Hong Kong International Optometric Symposium: https://www.hktdc.com/event/hkopticalfair/en/the-22nd-hong-kong-international-optometric-symposium
The HKTDC’s Media Room: http://mediaroom.hktdc.com/en

Fair Details (Physical)

Date:
6 – 8 November (Wednesday to Friday)

Time:
(6 to 7 November) 9:30am – 6:30pm (8 November) 9:30am – 5:00pm

Venue:
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Admission:
For trade visitors aged 18 or above only. Onsite Registration Fee: HK$100 per person (free for e-Badge registration and pre-registered buyers)

Click2Match – Smart Business Matching Platform

Date:
30 October – 15 November

Hashtag: #HKTDC
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About HKTDC
The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body established in 1966 to promote, assist and develop Hong Kong’s trade. With 50 offices globally, including 13 in Mainland China, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a two-way global investment and business hub. The HKTDC organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to create business opportunities for companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in the mainland and international markets. The HKTDC also provides up-to-date market insights and product information via research reports and digital news channels. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.

AI Will Shape The Business Agenda In The APAC Region Next Year

Business News

Get ready for some major changes in the APAC business landscape in 2025! AI-driven initiatives will be the driving force behind tech improvements for companies in the region. After having spent more than a year or so piloting and experimenting with generative AI in 2024, businesses will face the harsh realities of the region-specific challenges ahead. Brace yourselves for stricter AI and data privacy regulations, limited data and analytics capabilities, and ever-evolving customer demands.

Leading firms are already taking a close look at their digital investments and working hard to enhance their performance through targeted data and AI investments. They know that the key to success lies in embracing technology and staying ahead of the game. And they’re not alone in this journey. With a combination of strong technical expertise, increased tech spending, and regional tech providers offering tailored solutions, APAC business leaders will be able to meet the demands of both regulators and customers.

With all that in mind, this year’s predictions for APAC are a culmination of changes that organizations will make across their value chains to win in the impending era of AI:

Sixty percent of APAC firms will localize AI with regionally trained language models.

In 2025, AI innovation strategies in the APAC region will be reshaped by diverse customer needs, regulatory challenges, and linguistic barriers. We believe that 60% of firms and governments in major markets such as India and China will integrate locally developed large language models alongside global ones, targeting sectors like finance, education, and healthcare. Unlike the US’s focus on public cloud, 90% of large enterprises in Greater China will favor a hybrid strategy with private cloud. Geopolitical tensions will further propel regional AI investments, while local AI chipsets are set to power over 5% of AI computing in China, enhancing technology self-sufficiency.
A common APAC-wide AI legislative framework will remain a distant dream.
The Asia Pacific region showcases a fragmented landscape for AI legislation, unlike the EU’s unified approach. While many countries share core principles like citizen protection and data privacy, their implementations vary widely. For example, Singapore promotes responsible AI with mature guidelines, whereas China focuses on laws against algorithmic misconduct. India uses existing criminal laws for similar issues. Though initiatives such as the ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics are emerging, they are still early-stage, requiring APAC organizations to invest in compliance tailored to each country’s regulations as AI adoption expands.

One in five APAC firms will make measurement of digital performance a top priority.
Forrester’s 2024 survey data reveals that only 38% of digital decision-makers use KPIs to assess digital initiatives. Despite robust digital budgets for 2025, many APAC firms struggle to connect various metrics to financial KPIs. To bridge this gap, leading companies will invest in measurement intelligence technologies and establish cross-functional task forces to enhance measurement practices. Digital leaders should be cautious of genAI dashboard solutions, however, as vendors often underestimate the complexities involved in data integration and analysis.

Download Forrester’s complimentary Predictions guide, which covers more of our top predictions for 2025. Get additional complimentary resources, including webinars, on the Predictions 2025 hub.

This post was written by VP, Research Director Ashutosh Sharma and it originally appeared here.

World Bank Meeting, Washington DC reveals looming labour crisis in developing countries 

Technology

By Osman Mubarik Abu 

The ongoing World Bank Group annual meeting in Washington DC, reveals that in the next decade, 1.2 billion young people will require employment, but only 400 million jobs will be available. 

The Co-Founder of the Tudu Center for Leadership and Development, Osman Mubarik Abu, made this revelation to media personnel at the ongoing 2024 World Bank Meeting in Washington DC.

He indicated that available facts from the World Bank predict this claim and further analysed that, per the data, developing countries would be the worst affected in this labour crisis.

He lamented that there is a current skills mismatch between what graduates are being trained in and what the job market is being sort after. 

He appealed to governments and other stakeholders in Africa and Ghana to be specific and immediately start rethinking and reviewing the current curriculum of education to at least mitigate the pending danger ahead of the crisis against the youth graduating from the institutions.

Mr. Osman, who is participating in the World Bank policy forum during the three-day meeting, featuring experts, held discussions on various issues, including transparency in domestic debts and oversight of public debt, the need to use Agro-food systems as an engine for sustainable growth, and job creation.

Key issue that captured a lot of attention was the transition of green technologies and how create more jobs and the future of work for women and men. 

The discussions also focused on sustainable development and the impact of investing in essential public services. 

The World Bank President Ajay Banga joined experts, including the former Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire Patrick Achi, to discuss how to create more dignified jobs for young people, particularly from developing countries. 

H.E. Patrick Achi, a former Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, advised developing countries to immediately consider the low hanging fruit in dealing with the issue of education mismatch by “improving upon the quality of education delivery instead of just churing out graduates from the schools”.

More stories here

Related

‘We have emotions too’: Climate scientists respond to attacks on objectivity

Science and Health

Climate scientists who were mocked and gaslighted after speaking up about their fears for the future have said acknowledging strong emotions is vital to their work.The researchers said these feelings should not be suppressed in an attempt to reach supposed objectivity. Seeing climate experts’ fears and opinions about the climate crisis as irrelevant suggests science is separate from society and ultimately weakens it, they said.The researchers said they had been subject to ridicule by some scientists after taking part in a large Guardian survey of experts in May, during which they and many others expressed their feelings of extreme fear about future temperature rises and the world’s failure to take sufficient action. They said they had been told they were not qualified to take part in this broad discussion of the climate crisis, were spreading doom and were not impartial.However, the researchers said that embracing their emotions was necessary to do good science and was a spur to working towards better ways of tackling the climate crisis and the rapidly increasing damage being done to the world. They also said that those dismissing their fears as doom-laden and alarmist were speaking frequently from a position of privilege in western countries, with little direct experience of the effects of the climate crisis.The three experts have published a comment article in the journal Nature Climate Change, titled Scientists have emotional responses to climate change too. They said that, at a point when the climate crisis has already arrived and the key questions are how to limit and survive it, their aim in speaking out was to start a discussion about how climate experts across all disciplines can best communicate the urgency needed with the public.Pretending to be a “robot” is bad science, said Dr Shobha Maharaj, an author of the Nature article from the University of Fiji. “The basic definition of science is to take all parameters into consideration. If you pretend your emotions don’t exist, then you’re not looking at the big picture.”She added: “Scientists have generally been very cautious with how they communicate, and where has that gotten us right now. I’m not saying that we should just flare up into a frenzy and say ‘Oh my God, this is the end’. But being honest and candid about the truth should never be hidden.”Prof Lisa Schipper from the University of Bonn, who is also an author of the article, said: “As social scientists, we are very much aware that there is no such thing as neutral or unbiased [science] – you just have to take steps to make sure that your bias doesn’t take over.”The ideal of objectivity in science has long been criticised by philosophers of science, who argue that it is impossible to attain and not necessarily desirable in any case.“If you don’t acknowledge your emotions, then where are you going to get that impetus to do better as a scientist?” Maharaj said. “We should not continue to trivialise the fact that we are climate scientists and we have emotions too.”Schipper said: “If you feel strongly and care, that emotion is also allowing us to continue to study places, people and phenomena that are unfortunately part of the sad destruction of the planet. I don’t think we have the choice now to be unemotional about climate change research.”Maharaj also raised the issue of privilege. “Being a woman of colour from the global south and a scientist, I’m used to having everything I say pushed back against, so I didn’t at first find the trolling at all surprising, but I did find it concerning. They were saying we can’t be candid about what we think and how we feel because that’s going to just paralyse people into inaction because of the fear.“This pushback is coming from people in place[s] of privilege, who most likely have had very little to no lived experience on the frontlines of climate change. Climate scientists from the global south, who are on the frontlines, are not going to say that because I’m expressing worry about this we should stop trying to find solutions. In fact, quite the opposite. They say this should be the impetus to actually do more and to work harder.”Schipper said expressing their fears also guards against the normalisation of the impacts of the climate crisis, from heatwave deaths to people left homeless by floods to falling polar bear populations. “When we’re calling out and saying we’re really worried, we’re upset, it should remind people that these things are not OK.”The third author of the Nature article was Prof Gretta Pecl, from the University of Tasmania, Australia. She said tracking the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef over 30 years had left her tearful at times, but that the feelings of fear fuelled her to work harder. “We experience distress when faced with impacts of climate change because we care, because we love the natural world and because we want to do what we can to minimise pain and suffering of fellow humans.”The scientists said their aim in speaking out was to stimulate discussion. “Our point is not to create arguments among scientists but to start talking about these elephants in the room: emotions and privilege,” said Maharaj. “We need to come together and understand each other. The public are looking to us for information and deserve no less.”