February 2, 2024: People have very different understandings of even the simplest words, catching fog to save island forests and measles is on the rise in the UK. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Psychological studies show that people have very different concepts in their minds for most words. Even simple words like "penguin" conjure varying images in many people's minds. So it makes sense that for more complicated and nuanced topics like climate change, a shared understanding is rare. Kris De Meyer, a neuroscientist at University College London found in studies that the concepts of "risk," "uncertainty" and "threat" (all terms used in the climate discussion) mean very different things to people. Such differences are underpinned by differences in how the brain represents concepts, a process influenced by politics, emotion and character, according to neuroscience research.
Why this matters: This phenomenon may explain why climate scientists struggle to get their messages across to the public and policy makers, and why big financial organizations underestimate the threats of climate change. Terms can even differ from one discipline to another. For example, the term "risk" to an economist is an estimate of probability of a particular outcome occurring. But climate scientists use "risk" to describe negative consequences of warming global temperatures.
What can be done: People are usually oblivious to these disparities, recent psychological studies show. De Meyer says his first step is to make people aware their concepts differ. "If people are aware it's there, that will make a big difference in how they're able to communicate," says cognitive psychologist Celeste Kidd of the University of California, Berkeley. | | | On Gran Canaria, one of the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa, researchers are testing ways to capture water from fog. For millions of years, the island's ancient cloud forests, called Laurisilva, have captured moisture from the humid air to create a lush subtropical climate. Scientists are trying to replicate this process. As fog rolls uphill from the lowlands, large metal structures, some equipped with mesh liners or human-made spindles that imitate pine needles, capture condensed water from the fog. The team uses the water to irrigate local forests and new seedlings.
Why this is important: As we've done to many islands in the world, humans have deforested large areas of Gran Canaria. When the forests are gone, and the roots of plant life no longer trap water in the ground, the land dries up and gives way to desert. The team on Gran Canaria hopes that by restoring the forest, the local aquifers can slowly recover.
What the experts say: Water loss snowballs, says Gustavo Viera Ruiz, project director for Life Nieblas, the group installing and testing the fog collectors. "More desert, less water. More issues for the population. More issues for farmers, for biodiversity." Click here to watch a short documentary on the fog catchers. | | | Pine-needle-like filaments capture water out of fog on Gran Canaria island. Credit: Fernando Gayesky, Meghan McDonough/Scientific American | | | • Measles cases have ticked up at an alarming rate in the U.K. because of low MMR vaccination. The U.S. could see similar outbreaks. | 4 min read | | | • Sallie Pero Mead, an electrical engineer working more than 100 years ago, made major discoveries about how electromagnetic waves propagate. Her work laid the groundwork for radar technology. | 15 min listen | | | • A large and impressive number of AI research groups, from Meta to NASA, have formed an alliance to keep their research "open and transparent." The idea of open research sounds good. But it could make safe AI technology even harder to achieve, writes Wai Chee Di, an author and academic at Harvard's Center for the Environment. | 4 min | | | OUR MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK | | | • Consciousness Is a Continuum, and Scientists Are Starting to Measure It | 6 min read | • Elon Musk's Neuralink Has Implanted Its First Chip in a Human Brain. What's Next? | 6 min read | • Cleaning Water Naturally the Ancient Maya Way | 4 min read | | | It's both unsettling and incredible to think of the myriad ways readers of this newsletter integrate and envision the science we cover. For scientists, how a problem is conceptualized ultimately leads to which questions they attempt to answer with experimentation and innovation. So you could say that each unique mind, with its own "thought diversity," gives rise to science itself! | Thank you for bringing your curiosity to this newsletter. Send me feedback anytime to newsletters@sciam.com. I read every email and respond to many. See you on Monday! | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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