As I noted some time back there is a huge gap, or disconnect, between what we as a species know and what we as a species do – between knowledge and action – and I bemoaned in particular the actions of scientists who know so much about so many things yet keep their knowledge from reaching ordinary people through the ridiculous ways in which they spread their findings, mainly by publishing articles in extremely expensive and highly specialized journals and books.
Anyway, here are two rather different examples of scientists who act on their knowledge, one that tells of an ornithologist, Robert Ridgeley, who has published guides about, and created organizations to help save, the tropical birds that he knows so much about (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Ridgely); the other, by Bill McGuire, a vulcanologist, who regularly warns of the geophysical and climate hazards that he knows so much about in newspapers and popular books and activist organizations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_McGuire_(volcanologist) – this time telling about the super El Niño that has started to make its presence felt as it causes havoc around the world.
Let us hope their stories might inspire other scientists to break out of their commercial academic cocoons!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/15/rise-global-temperatures-super-el-nino
