A growing number of scientists from all over the world are resorting to direct action, such as tying themselves to public buildings and blocking roads, to protest what they call the lack of a solution to the climate emergency.
They claim that messages about the climate crisis can no longer be reduced to scientific publications, because "the house is on fire".
But there are scientists who believe that, before raising concerns about the climate crisis through protests, they need to do more to find scientific solutions.
"Scientists' Rebellion," an international network of scientists, has been organizing protests and direct action in several countries for more than a year.
She says that the number of their participants exceeded 2.000.
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"I'm ashamed of the climate injustice, not the arrest"
One such scientist is Cornelia Hutt from Germany.
An epidemiologist with more than 20 years of experience, she participated in several climate protests.
After a roadblock in Munich last October, she was arrested and charged with forcibly preventing the movement of cars on the roads and obstructing the normal flow of traffic.
The court process is ongoing, but Hatt says she is determined to continue.
"Science offers solutions to stop climate collapse, but our government isn't adopting them, and that's why we have to call it out - from the streets."
The next United Nations climate conference - COP28 in the United Arab Emirates - is set to take the first global review of each country's progress on the climate goals agreed at a major international conference in Paris in 2015.
The agreement wants to keep the increase in the average global temperature below two degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial period and aims for 1,5 degrees, which scientists say is a much safer threshold.
To achieve this, the world must reduce carbon emissions by 2030 percent by 43 compared to 2019 levels.
But the latest UN assessment from last year showed that the world's carbon emissions are increasing by 11 percent compared to the level of 2010, instead of decreasing.
Hatt says there are even bigger risks to the global south.
"The people who live there have contributed much less to greenhouse gas emissions, but are therefore significantly more vulnerable to their impact than we are in Germany, and I feel ashamed of that climate injustice."
Public action or publication?
Some scientists claim that people are perfectly aware of the climate crisis and do not need the protests of scientists to understand the seriousness of the situation.
One of them is Jessica Jewell, an associate professor at Chalmers University, who thinks the protest could damage the credibility of scientists.
"The role of scientists is to independently assess risks and options, and this is especially important when you consider that every climate option, including no action, has winners and losers. To protect their own credibility, scientists must avoid serving specific political actors in this debate," she says.
"The fact that we're facing a crisis actually makes it even more important that we do more on the scientific side to solve this."
Fellow climate scientist Zick Hausfader tweeted last year: “I'm used to the crazy and misguided attempts to blame climate scientists for society's failure to effectively deal with climate change.
"But to suggest that the solution is for climate scientists to go on strike and stop doing science is a supernova of nonsense."
A BBC World Service survey in 31 countries in 2021 showed that an average of 56 percent of people want their government to set tougher targets for tackling climate change as soon as possible.
Another 36 percent of them want their government to take a more moderate approach and support gradual action.
"Enough with climate science"
Scientists resorting to protests claim that enough research has been done in the last four decades.
They say that solutions have already been presented in six IPCC reports, but that governments are not acting on that evidence.
Professor Julia Steinberger, who faced arrest and trial over climate protests, was the lead author of the IPCC report published last year.
"When it was published, I responded to media requests over the next few days, which resulted in 42 articles in the media.
"Six months later, I sat in protest on a Swiss highway for maybe 20 minutes and I'm still getting media attention for that one action.
"So in terms of media impact and keeping attention on the urgency of the climate crisis, a few minutes on the highway had a much greater effect than years and years of my work on the IPCC report."
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"When scientists take action, people pay attention"
Before presenting their assessments, IPCC scientists spend days and days in closed-door meetings with politicians and government representatives participating in the UN climate process to agree on the content of the report.
Rose Abramoff, an earth scientist from the US, believes that despite all the efforts of scientists, there has been hardly any policy change among governments mainly due to fossil fuel and agribusiness lobbyists who still have a large influence on the policy making of countries.
Until two years ago, Abramoff usually stood still on melting permafrost in Alaska and measured how much greenhouse gases were being emitted into the atmosphere, making simulations of how much warming would increase the earth's carbon emissions.
"I didn't see a realistic way for my research to change policy at the speed that was necessary," she tells us.
"And so I thought it was time to try something different."
She has been arrested six times in the past 12 months for taking part in direct action as well - most recently on May 10 in Massachusetts, USA, where she and other scientists and activists occupied a state legislative committee for hours demanding an end to investment in fossil fuel infrastructure.
At the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting last December, just before the speakers took the stage, she and NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus unfurled a sign that read: "From the lab to the streets."
"AGU kicked us out of the conference," she said.
But there were also successes, she says.
She and other protesters tied up at more than a dozen private airport terminals in 13 countries last November to protest luxury travel.
One of them was Shipol Airport in the Netherlands.
On April 2023, XNUMX, the airport issued a statement announcing several plans including a ban on private jets.
"Shipol wants a ban on private jets and small business aviation, which cause disproportionate noise pollution and carbon dioxide emissions per passenger," the airport said.
"When scientists take action, people pay attention," says Abramoff.
Jordan Andres Cruz, a carbon scientist from Ecuador, agrees.
"Our actions not only put pressure on governments, but also arouse the public's curiosity, which helps them understand how serious the climate crisis is," says a scientist who has organized protests in the remote Andes mountains, as well as in big cities.
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One of them was at the environment ministry in the capital Quito last year when he and other scientists pasted scientific papers related to climate change on the walls and windows of the government agency.
"The goal was to expose the government's double standards: on the one hand, it presents itself in global forums as eco-conscious, while simultaneously pursuing the goal of increasing oil production in the Amazon region of Ecuador.
"Our window to do something about the climate is closing very quickly and if the scientists, who have the knowledge, don't alert ordinary people and put pressure on the authorities, I don't know who will."
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