Václav Klaus's new book will be released tomorrow. What is endangered? Climate or freedom? Of course, your humble correspondent feels honored to be referred to. The party celebrating the book will be broadcast on the CT24 TV channel and online at 4:30 am EDT.Czech climate scientists respond. Mr Jan Pretel thinks that Klaus puts economy above the scientific ecology. However, he agrees with the Czech president that mankind shouldn't make enormous investments into emission reductions without thinking carefully about them.
Despite some disagreement with certain portions of the book, the text has been praised by Mr Radim Tolasz, another climatologist: "The only thing he has done is to stand firmly on the other side and offer many diverse counter-arguments which balances the whole discussion. And that could be useful."
This comment by the professional could have been more useful than my whole recommendation of the book that probably appears on the cover... ;-)
Nevertheless, both climatologists agreed with each other that even though 0.6 Celsius degree change of temperature can be negligible for Václav Klaus and for mankind, it is not negligible for Earth. That's apparently another result of a consensus of Czech climate scientists. :-)
However, you can see that there are no hysterical emotions associated with the book. I think that this lobby doesn't really exist in the Czech Republic. In the early 1990s, there were many articles in Lidovky about global warming. At that time I thought it was a cheap scientific topic that overshadowed serious sciences and those intellectuals who kept writing about climate were superficial but I think it is fair to say that they have never become influential in the Czech Republic.
The book includes a picture of Klaus as a burning heretic: do you already believe global warming?
Klaus: a real defender of the environment
Don't imagine that Klaus wants people to waste energy and resources. Quite on the contrary. He also defends mass transportation that shouldn't be called "socka" (socialist transport). We shouldn't reduce our wealth to having a maximum number of things imported from a maximal distance.
He also mentions the story from Japan where they offered him Evian, the French mineral water, in one of the most famous Japanese spa. I've heard this story during his talk at Cato. One of the most powerful arguments for the natural character of the warming according to Klaus is global warming on other planets.
Happening (update)
In the Slavia café where the book was "christened", Klaus mentioned that his book is not really about temperature measurements since he doesn't want to "go into the climatologists' cabbage". It is about an extrarordinarily serious attack against freedom. In front of the café, Greenpeace held their own happening. They had a duplicate Klaus in a rubber mask who preached that the Earth was flat and no geographer can say anything else. They were promoting their own book called "Flattish, not Round Earth: What Is Endangered: Climate or Common Sense?"
Klaus has explained that this movement was an example of those who profit from the current fashionable wave while many politicians and scientists are motivated by political or financial benefits. The book should promote a rational debate about the issue, he said.
