Truth, Get Your Running Shoes On

As a devoted student of climate science, I have always wondered how climate change deniers, having less than 3 percent of the science community behind them, can have so many followers in the public.

Today, two thirds of us get our “news and information” from the muddy waters of social media. Mark Twain* said that a lie can travel half way around the world before a truth gets its pants on. This is no longer a remark made only in jest. MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, students recently traced stories, both lies and truth, via internet paths. It was not even a contest.  We love and pass on lies much more enthusiastically than truths. My warning to those that swim in these toxic waters, the whirlpools are many and deep. A course in fact checking should be a bottom line requirement before diving in.  You may even look for a course in critical thinking.  Not only is critical thinking a great way to keep your head above polluted waters, but it is a life enhancer, if not a life preserver.

About one third of us get our information from newspapers and their kin. Most owners and editors are open-minded yet discerning. While very large newspapers can afford to employ science journalists, it is usually a budgetary challenge, unachievable, for most newspapers. Please thank editors, who continue to bring critical science to us.

Despite the low cost of science magazines, few people take a subscription to Scientific American, Science News, Discovery, the Skeptical Inquirer, or National Geographic. In these magazines the whole staff is dedicated to bringing us scientific news. They also bring to our attention lots of new books about everything under the sun. And, even the sun itself.

And, we do have libraries. If librarians knew there was intellectual interest they would, I wager a bet, start a science magazine subscription, or two, for patrons with a passion for knowledge.

To parents and grandparents, “curiosity is infectious.” If you get a subscription to any reputable publication share it with your kids/grandkids. You might propel them to achieve something mankind has striven for since creation, the discovery of truth.

 Let’s lace up our running shoes and give lies some competition.

Climate Science Link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/domino-effect-of-climate-events-could-push-earth-into-a-hothouse-state

Science challenge: Teachers and students, submit well researched articles to your newspaper.

*Others are attributed to have written this also.

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