Reading ‘Merchants of Doubt’ in Havana
“There’s a bird in the room. It’s on the TV.”
“Now it’s on the bed,” my wife said, getting up to slide open the balcony door a little wider.
“I felt it on my leg,” I said. Just a whisper of a sensation. I saw a little flicker of black and then it was gone, out into the warm Mediterranean breeze and gentle surf that lulled us to sleep the night before. Out into the sunshine and palm trees of Cuba, leaving us in our air-conditioned bubble.
••• In the shade, near the pool, I am listening to an audiobook of “Merchants of Doubt” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. I have not yet seen the documentary based on it, but assumed the book would provide more depth. It did.
It chronicles the careers of a handful of Cold War-era scientists who spent the latter part of their lives attacking peer-re- viewed research behind everything from tobacco and acid rain to ozone depletion and global warming. Ideological distortionists all, and there’s not a shred of actionable material in the book for them to hang a lawsuit on. A surviving member of the cabal, A. Fred Singer, nevertheless remains defiant and unrepentant.
It’s astounding such people can be proven wrong on so many important fronts, and still rise from the ashes to deceive the populace all over again.
My mojito has run out and the heat has become a distraction. I remove the earphones to take a quick dip in the pool.
••• We are sitting on a leather couch in a small club, smoking cigars, drinking fine rum and talking to three businessmen. One is a former Cayman Islands cabinet minister. He insists its banking system has been unfairly smeared. He also says Cubans aren’t any poorer than people in other countries.
Another of the three has business ties to Newfoundland. He praises the province, but says he finds Newfoundlanders “naïve.” He looks at me anxiously — perhaps that’s the wrong word, he suggests. I pause. “No, that’s the right word,” I reply. Then I wonder if he means the general populace, or just business people.
••• Why is science so easy to distort? How can scientific consensus be so clear, yet be so vulnerable to the wiles of pro- pagandists and hacks? The reason is that the public rarely hears from scientists. The public does not read scientific journals. They listen to talking heads who they find most engaging, or articles and blog postings that best fuel their biases.
In the mid-1980s, you could tell people the science behind acid rain had not been settled, even though it had been — years before. You could argue industries had already installed smokestack scrubbers that remove particulates — without mentioning this measure actually augmented acid rain.
And you can say Cuba has a lower poverty level than many other countries, but you’d be ignoring its unique “trickle up” economy in which social services such as health care and education come at the expense of a decent standard of living.
••• We are in a tropical paradise, yet good food is at a premium. Fruit and vegetables are low in quantity and quality. “Eat your mint, because it might be the only vegetable you get,” says my wife as we sip on mojitos. We speculate that tobacco, coffee and sugar have sucked up too much of the arable land — but it is only speculation.
You can, however, get ham and cheese. Everywhere there is “jamón y queso.” You can get ham and cheese sandwiches, ham and cheese omelets, ham and/or cheese on chicken or pork. Or you can just get ham and cheese, by itself, on a plate.