I started reading science fiction around the time the first Earth Day was created, so climate-related disasters have always been part of the mix. But with real climate-related disaster on the horizon, that mix is getting more potent and is getting the message across better than boring stuff like this blog post, or so says an article in Undark, a new magazine from MIT:
The most detailed PowerPoint presentation or scientific paper, no matter how exhaustively peer-reviewed, cannot communicate the immediacy or devastation that a fictional portrayal of a sunken coastline, an inundated city, or a barren wasteland can impress upon a reader – particularly if scientists are predicting those things as being hundreds of years away.
“Despite all the good science that has been published about climate change, most people don’t really understand why it matters,” Oreskes said, “and we especially don’t understand why it matters to us — people living here and now, as opposed to future generations or in faraway places.”
There’s more background in this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which prompted the Undark piece.
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cli fi, beer in hand in taiwan. notice undark never once mentions verboten term . why is that?
Maybe the author/editor just forgot – I’ve certainly left important stuff out of some articles from sheer carelessness.
david. no i asked mr bajak. he replid “sorry dan, just didnt have space”. i replied for five letter term? which is the genre term name itself. his editors could not find space? come on! just sloppy lazy journalism and editing . but the article was very good, other that omitting the name of the genre he was writing about. but hey , forgiven.