Hawking says climate change poses greater threat to humanity than terrorism - International Herald Tribune LONDON: Scientist Stephen Hawking described climate change Wednesday as a greater threat to the planet than terrorism.

The interesting thing here is not so much that this clearly illogical comparison is being given any credence but that none of the reports mention that Hawking isn't the first English scientist to say this (first, to my knowledge, was the UK government's science advisor).

To describe climate change as  “a greater threat to the planet than terrorism” is about the same  as saying that anteaters are a greater threat to ants than to nuclear submarines.  While it is possible  to  come up with conceivable scenarios such as an anteater getting stuck in a submarine’s engine or a terrorist getting their hands on enough explosives to blow the planet to kingdom come, neither is  likely, nor a primary function of  terrorism or anteaterism. The argument holds even if we concede that  neither climate change nor terrorism pose  any threat to the planet at all - merely to the  existence of humans on the planet (geocohesively an entirely contingent  actor).  Terrorists pose no threat at all while climate change poses  a potentially (depending on the accuracy of models) significant  threat to  humans in current population densities and  with current industrially-conditioned social structures.  (In fact,  both pale into insignificance  when compared with asteroids or nuclear holocausts.)

Two features of our cognitive / conceptual system were necessary for this widely reported quote to make it into general consciousness.

1. Conceptual frames of danger that are evoked when a comparison is necessary. The currently socially salient frame of danger to larger groupings of people is centered around scenarios and folk-theories of terrorism that are daily being negotiated in the media and other platforms of public discourse. These then get conceptually integrated with similarly negotiated scenarios of global warming into an interestingly indeterminate blend.

2. Socially cognitive structures of information credibility. Here Stephen Hawking (being the new Einstein) fulfills  the role of ‘paragon’ - somebody whose judgment is implicitly trusted. (Of course, his understanding of complicated physics in no way makes him a better judge of climate change, which depends on completely different kind of modeling, than anyone else.) He plays the role of the high priest, the ultimate interpreter of science. If he takes a position on an issue, he should be taken seriously. (His recent embarrassingly trite question on Yahoo Answers notwithstanding.)

Thus we can see how a simple sentence uttered in a complicated context can be dependent on an even more complicated (if straightforward in principle) conceptual pattern.