In the Company of Volcanoes

- Janine Krippner Originally published on 20/9/2021 here: http://janinekrippner.weebly.com/la-palma when we did not have access to our blog. I am honestly angry about how misinformation about a small eruption has put so many people in a state of pure fear across multiple countries. There is enough stress and fear in the world and I truly feel for everyone being impacted by this. It is incredibly sad to see people losing their homes and livelihoods to this eruption, and on top of that is a tsunami of utter lies. We all need more compassion. We all need to be careful of what we share. We all need to be kinder. We all need to think more critically when we are afraid (this is a tough one). This is a bad case of the implications of people acting without these traits. People want us, the experts, to say that this scenario is impossible to ease fears, but that is something that is extremely difficult for a scientist to say. There are many scary things in this world that will no...

- Dr. Janine Krippner Photo shared by @Mikel_Jollett. Right now is a time of deep reflection for many of us. People are taking to the streets marching and advocating for human rights, for science, and for protecting our planet. Tens of thousands of people, around the planet, together. I love this sign 'At the start of every disaster movie there's a scientist being ignored' . Usually in a disaster movie there is some person trying to silence the scientist (who is trying to warn of impending disaster) is portrayed as the bad guy, and often succumbs to the disaster itself. Now, it is important in reality to have people asking the hard questions and looking at all sides of an issue (this does not make them a bad guy), and so many threats do not lead to disaster. In movie-world we know in hindsight that the scientist was right and everyone should have listened to them. So why isn't it so obvious in reality? Why do we ignore so many scientists saying things like ...