To my knowledge, there had been an understanding that scientists were being fairly conservative with their statements of how bad things were going to get, and how fast it was going to happen.

I know of two primary drivers for this (which I am somewhat oversimplifying for brevity):

Scientists really didn't want to get it wrong by saying X will definitely happen by year Y, and then be wrong, thus giving ammunition to climate deniers and vested interests running counter-PR such as oil companies.
Scientists didn't want to paint a picture of unstoppable, inevitable doom that no person could possibly imagine a way for them to fix, or contribute to fixing, thus leading to the mindset of 'if there's no way to stop it why even try?'.

[–] goddard_guryon@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

For your first point, I'd just like to add that the scientists didn't give conservative estimates to stay clear of conspiracy theorists, but to stay clear of criticisms of fellow scientists. If there's insufficient data to back up the claims a researcher makes, you can bet the other researchers will always beat the conspiracy theorists in calling out the bullshit.