For a while I have been under the impression that printed books had become useless. Not really. When you need to learn something on a new subject, books are a good way to go into full-immersion, avoiding the infinite distractions you face when you are on line.
The picture shows just some of the books I have been reading (or re-reading) during the past few months about communication on climate change, about communication in general, and about the psychology of the human mind when facing bad news. If I were to pile up all the books I have collected on this subject, the stack would be about twice higher than this one.
So, what did I learn from these books? In short, I learned a lot. And I am still learning: it is a completely new world. I thought that as a scientists all what I had to learn about was science; well, it is not so. There is much more. It is not enough to be scientists; we must learn how to communicate science.
And so, back to the pile of books..........
My own two cents worth:
ReplyDeleteThere is certainly much more to be learned from both the physical and natural sciences (there are many specialized ones and all are coming up with a steady flow of new and better findings and provisional conclusions about various aspects and workings of the geo and bio-physical Earth System) (regarding limits to growth, peak non renewable and renewable resources, climate change, ocean acidification, pollution and ongoing biosphere degradation) as there is to learn from the social sciences (there also are many and each has its own flow of findings, views and perspectives on the key issues regarding the dynamics and changes needed in the human social system.
But my own view is that we already know enough that something needs to be done and done urgently. (i.e. starting yesterday and preferably 50 years ago) Unfortunately not as much as could be being done is actually being done. We risk ending up knowing everything about what is happening (from the natural and physical sciences) and what and how it best should be communicated 100% effectively, and what should done about it (from the social sciences and from other human history experiences) without sufficient organization and actual implementation of what we already know needs to be done.