Klaus the climatologist

It is often said that Germany was brought to its knees by a question children asked their parents at the end of the 1960s: „what did you do during Nazism?“ The idea of being asked such a questions has been frightening parents ever since, in particular if there is something going on with the parents.

Maybe that was the reason that the Czech climatologists made a decisive move on Wednesday 4 July. They publicly presented a report saying that human activity very likely caused global warming on our planet, and that it is dangerous to underestimate the consequences. They organized the presentation at a time, when it seemed that amateur climatologist Václav Klaus had forever captured public attention regarding the global warming questions.

The public engagement of the Czech scientists is not important only for them. Klaus delivered a monologue that turned into an unbearable speech due to its lack of common sense, which was undignified for the Czech president. No matter how serious the climate warming issue is, the debate on it does deserve more convincing spokespeople than Martin Durkin, a man denying the 13-year-old genocide in Rwanda, whom Klaus invited to a lecture at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Durkin should have supported the president’s theories as a climatologic authority. Klaus brought with him a movie called „The Great Global Warming Swindle,“ which Durkin made as a counterbalance to „An Inconvenient Truth“ by Al Gore. The media…