The Conversation: Climate change: it's only human to exaggerate, but science itself does not

To exaggerate is human, and scientists are human. Exaggeration and the complementary art of simplification are the basic rhetorical tools of human intercourse. So yes, scientists do exaggerate. So do politicians, perhaps even when, as the UK's former environment secretary Owen Paterson did, they claim that climate change forecasts are "widely exaggerated". A more pertinent question is: does the way in which scientists and politicians speak publicly lead to wild exaggeration?