By Daniel de la Calle
The internet, that jungle out there.
If you have looked for articles about ocean acidification or any of the uncountable environmental problems we are facing I am certain you have already stumbled upon a website or personal blog where it is all refuted and mocked, most times with a shockingly angry and aggressive tone. I am not into gossiping, junk food or onychophagia, but do sadly have other unhealthy habits, one of which is the inability to simply close such pages and move on. I always need to read inside, scroll down the comments, open new tabs to find out who the person writing is, follow that ping pong game of replies and counter replies. Where exactly does this anger come from? It cannot just be from that person’s belief that environmentalists and scientists are wrong or liars. These comments tend to be peppered with curses, thoughts are clumsily yelled, misspelled from the fury spilled onto the keyboard.
But every once in a while the information is more organized, it has the appearance of equanimity, of founded research and knowledge. Since I am no scientist and would get lost in any serious discussion on geology, chemistry or biology, a few of those adamant statements do shake me and make me wonder. One of those people, though histrionic, is that certain Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (always think of Lord Melbury when I read about him), a more eloquent, versed, verbal speaker than the average. This even served him to give testimony this past spring in Congress as an unidentified type of expert. Something good has come out of so much wrong: 20 world renowned climate scientists has examined the part of Monckton’s testimony related to their particular area of expertise and the summary of those responses has been put together in Climate Scientists Respond,
a document that not only refutes every single argument put forward by the aforementioned, but most misinformed testimonies out there. It makes for good reading plus, since one of those experts happens to be Ken Caldeira, one of my favorite interviews in A Sea Change, I felt obliged to include it in this blog.
Ken and Sven walking down the beach in California.
