Human Understanding is Built on Stories

The term communication gap is a euphemism. It is more accurate to say they are parallel universes. Part of it has to do with the nature of the subject.

Independent journalist and author Sopan Joshi spoke to Snigdhendu Bhattacharya about the challenges of explaining the science of climate change to ordinary people. Excerpts:

There seems to be a communication gap between scientific knowledge of climate change and the public understanding of the subject. Do you agree?

It is one of the most difficult and complex subjects to understand and explain. Another part has to do with how we approach environmental problems. A third part is the nature of the human imagination.

Why is climate change so difficult to understand?

Because it requires familiarity with several branches of the sciences, sociology, politics and human behaviour, in all their complexity. This is quite beyond ordinary human comprehension. Each of us grows up with certain beliefs and a value system. That's not the framework for engaging with science. In science, whatever you say has to be rigorously questioned and defended. Scientific communication is based on disbelief and scepticism. Ordinarily, our capacity for scepticism and questioning is always limited. That's why scientific communication and public discourse are different worlds and communicate very differently.