Asteroids, climate change and hyperbole

Science communication is a delicate balance - but there is always a danger of someone highly invested in a particular aspect of science indulging in hyperbole and causing the opposite reaction to the one they intend.

Arguably, the most dangerous topic for this is climate change. Getting our response to climate change right is crucially important - global warming and its consequences is something we have to take action on. But, as Al Gore demonstrated in the past, making overblown statements on the subject can have a negative impact on getting the message across.

The latest indulgence in this line, which made the news on 15 April, was from palaeontologist Robert DePalma, who apparently said at a screening of a documentary he made with David Attenborough 'What's going on in the world today is terrifyingly close to the scale and timeframe of the end-Cretaceous extinction.'

He was referring to the asteroid impact that wiped out most of the dinosaurs - in fact it did far more, destroying three quarters of the animal and plant species on Earth over a timescale of just a few years. Now, climate change really is causing extinctions. But even with the worst predictions, its impact would not come close to the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event - and we are doing a lot to make sure that the worst predictions don't come true.

To be fair to Dr DePalma, he probably wasn't only talking about the impact of climate change, but the wider destruction of the environment caused by humans, which is responsible for a considerable amount of species loss on top of warming from greenhouse gasses. However, his comments led to newspaper headlines like "Climate change 'like asteroid hitting Earth''.

We have to consider the environment more. We have to get climate change under control. But telling the world that the sky is about to fall in is not the way to get people on your side. It's the same problem as then protests by Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain that prevent people getting to hospital or using green electric trains. All this badly thought out communication does is to turn the public against you. By all means get the facts across - but exaggeration is not the way to do it. Science should always be clear and accurate: this is essential if we are to maintain trust. It's not about misrepresenting reality to achieve a goal.

This has been a green heretic production.

See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

Search This Blog