Luis Samaniego is a hydrologist, he knows about moisture and climate change and extreme weather. But when scientists like him say what’s in store for us, they are often threatened. About climate research in 2021.
Of
Marlene Knobloch, Leipzig
God hovers on a coordinate system. Luis Samaniego sits on the front edge of his office chair, his dark curls hanging low over the desk. He lays out two axes with a red and a black marker pen: one stands for knowledge, one for faith. “Scientists are not belief-oriented people,” he says. Then he taps on the table, on an imaginary coordinate between the two lines on which the agnostics are roughly at home. “I’m here,” he says with a South American accent. “Maybe there is God, maybe not.” But Luis Samaniego doesn’t believe. He knows or he doesn’t know. The problem, he says, is, “People believe too much.”