Thought of the month ...

July 2013: Alarmist or Realist? The second article in my column “On the Edge” in ApoGeo (formerly Imaging Notes) has been published with the subheading “The Art and Urgency of Creating Worry”. In this column, I discuss the need to “irrationalize” the facts about climate change so that we can integrated them into our decision making. Neuroscience shows that our decisions are not dominated by rational facts but rather by our fears and worries. Unless we can connect facts to our feelings, our experience, and our cultural awareness, they have limited impact on our decisions. The challenge of climate change is unique and without any relation to past experience, be it of an individual, our current generation, or even the whole of human history. As a consequence, the facts that are very clear and frigthening do not have the effect they should have would we be the rational beings we often claim to be.

The column starts on page 18 of the Summer issue available at http://www.apogeospatial.com/images/apogeo_su2013_lowres.pdf.

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