February 2009: Watching CNN in a small hotel room in Brussels, where a show on new science was going on, I was shocked by the statement that the Greek "Poseidon" Project is studying the impact of global warming on tsunamis. First, I laughed, but then I was stunned. Can it get more crazy? We know that, taken everything together, the effect of global warming on ocean tides almost everywhere is negligible, if detectable at all. Why then should there be an impact on tsunamis, which are governed by the same physics as tides? In many cases, I encounter scientists who, ignoring basic knowledge, make statements that are pure nonsense but attractive to public media because they are reportable with a few buss words. Why do we, on the one hand, bother to go through a very resource-demanding reviewing process before scientific results can be published in scientific journals, while, on the other hand, the public media do not care to consult the peer-reviewed journals but prefer to listen to and report unqualified statements of individual scientists? But what can we expect after eight years in the "Bushes", where a past President of the United States could generally ignored peer-reviewed scientific results agreed upon by a larger fraction of the science community, and even classify them as not policy-relevant, without any significant reaction from the scientific community as a whole? Most of us (including me) seem to prefer making life difficult for each other, instead of fighting to "restore science to its rightful place," as the new President put it in his inauguration speech.

One more thought for February 2009 that I just had: Human fears are an amazingly poor indicator of reality, of the challenges and dangers we are facing. Both as individuals and as society, we have fears in the safest moments and places, and we are not afraid in moments of great danger. I remember one autumn evening, many years ago, when I was still a fear-ridden individual, and on one of my solitary hikes in the Norwegian mountains: I was resting in front of my tent, and in the slowly fading light and the increasing fog, large boulders on the gentle slope beneath me turned into wisents (or European bison), and, as the evening progressed, into frightening trolls. I was in one of the safest places on Earth, but full of fear. But I am normally not afraid when I am driving at 200 km/h (125 miles/h) on a German motorway, where the smallest mistake means death. When I came to the U.S. for the first time in 1972, the TV was promoting fears in the population by broadcasting the show "The Russians are coming," with as little relation to reality as my fears of wisents and trolls on that misty evening on the slope between the two peaks of Trollhetta. Climate change, which is threatening the well-being of humanity, does not seem to create substantial fears in the U.S. society. Even the fears induced by the economic crisis are out of scale towards the lower end, considering the real dangers and challenges. No TV show titled "The bad bankers are coming" is broadcast, and bad bankers in fact do well personally, even if they are transforming what we believed to be good banks into bad ones. There is no TV show making the point that "The bad CEOs are here", although we have too many of them who make their personal fortune by bringing the companies they are supposed to lead to success into great peril. Unlike the unreal fear of socialism that propelled TV shows in the '70ties, no well-founded fear of the current lemon socialism in the U.S. is fueling new TV shows. The U.S. society is like me: driving at 200 km/h on the autobahn and not afraid! Let's hope that shows like 'Boston Legal', 'Gray's anatomy', or even 'Brothers and Sisters' soon pick up the most urgent challenges our society is facing, and make us realize that what we need to fear are climate change, bad bankers, bad CEOs, and lemon socialism. Or that we get a new show called "The bad CEOs and banker are here," which for a change would be addressing a fear based in reality ...

If you have a story, thought, or picture worth to be considered as story, thought or picture of the month, please feel free to inform me about it by sending an e-mail to hpplag@unr.edu.