I re-read my post from yesterday (that means at least one person has read my entries :) and realize that it could give the wrong impression. What I meant to say is that the content of the blogosphere reactions is political not scientific, although it claims to be about science...
The level of cross-linking and commentary triggered by Mark Lynas's single post creates a hyper-storm of content. This massive increase in information contains absolutely no increase in knowledge. From this kind of behavior, it's easy to see that after enough of these hyper-storms, finding knowledge in the sea of information get's harder. Already google searches return so much information that one has to be selective in what one chooses to follow-up on, and if you are trying to discern what is actually happening, then good luck.
Let me give a good example. Yesterday I found a youtube video of what looks to be steam release from fukushima reactor 4 that took place on June 14th. Some people called it an explosion, but I can't tell from that video what is happening. Searching the web for an explanation is nearly hopeless, the majority of links are dire warnings for which this 'explosion' is yet more proof for the point of view of the author with a link back to the youtube video.
It's easy to say that no one bothers to check facts anymore, but when it's this difficult, it's hard to see any other outcome but increased paranoia among the people who routinely plug into this stream of self-referential links. It's also easy to see how one can get the impression that the evidence for whatever you are talking about, in this case the 'explosion', is overwhelming, why I found 25 links talking about it!
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