Parables and puns to explain science
Maxine Clarke
Wednesday, 03 December 2008 10:10 UTC
Euan Nisbet reviews Tyler Volk’s book ‘CO2 Rising’ in the new (December 08) issue of Nature Reports Climate Change (free to read online). The author uses parables and puns to describe scientific concepts, apparently. The book’s protagonist is “a little carbon atom called Dave.” From the review:
Like Prometheus, Dave habitually spends millions of years bound in a limestone cliff. But occasionally he escapes, most recently to travel variously into a glass of beer, through the rear end of an Irish earthworm, inside the brain of a giant Galapagos tortoise and as part of an air parcel to Mauna Loa where he is measured by climatologist Charles David Keeling, to be recorded on the infamous ‘Keeling curve’, which documents the twenty-first century rise in atmospheric CO2.
Dave has relatives: Coaleen, Oilivier and Methaniel in the fossil fuel family, and Icille. Coaleen heads for a strangler fig tree in Australia, Methaniel is taken up by a plant in the Arctic tundra, and Oilivier, who becomes a bicarbonate ion in the ocean, is followed by cheerful Dave, who finds himself diving to a sea bed carbon burial site. Really cool Icille gets trapped in an ice bubble.
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Fables, like political cartoons, are powerful. Orwell’s Animal Farm was the stake through the heart of Stalin’s Marxism. Tyler Volk’s simple tales in CO2 Rising are not at that level, but they are clearer and more easily read than the prose of most scientific writing, even in good scientific journalism. That clarity brings understanding. Despite — or perhaps because of — its dreadful puns and apparent simplicity, this is a book that can persuade, can educate, and can change policy. If there is one book on climate change that President-elect Barack Obama should read, it might well be Tyler Volk’s CO2 Rising. Its clear, simple exposition of atmospheric chemistry is so well-written that it might even convince past-presidents.
Interesting viewpoint?
Updated 03 December 2008 10:13 UTC
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Replies
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It’s a very difficult path to tread, without slipping into nauseous anthropomorphic twaddle. Perhaps he does, but from what I’ve seen, I’m not convinced…
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That’s strange, Brian – almost exactly the same thing has been said to me when I have proposed similar ideas – but with microbes rather than atoms in my case! I have to say I rather like the idea. I think it might serve to make concepts more accessible and fun, and I do like the sound of this book.
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Clare – it might not be strange, so much as telling.
I have read books like this that have made me cringe so much I… did whatever you do when you cringe so much. I’m not saying it’s impossible to do acceptably, just very, very difficult.
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But what is unacceptable to one person may be entertaining and informative to another. I think a lot depends on how you see the world.
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This is true. Now I’ve had modesty lessons from Henry, it’s very simple: the way I see the world is correct.
Seriously, though, I don’t think I’m alone in this inclination to wince. Part of the problem is that humour is very difficult to do, and by far the hardest type of humour to get away with (which far too many people try to do) is whimsy. Douglas Adams could do it and triumph, but very few others can.
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