Quote:
Originally Posted by Mahasattva
Ah Puleeze pay attention.
These are not fiction or from a book of fiction:
MichaelCrichton.com | The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming
Is the text of a speech Crichton gave at the National Press Club in Washington DC, on January 25, 2005.
MichaelCrichton.com | Environmentalism as Religion
Is the text of a speech he gave at the Commonwealth Club, in San Francisco, CA, on September 15, 2003
MichaelCrichton.com | Complexity Theory and Environmental Management
Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy, in Washington DC, on
November 6, 2005
MichaelCrichton.com | Testimony before the United States Senate
US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, in Washington, DC, on September 28, 200
MichaelCrichton.com | Science Policy in the 21st Century
Joint Session AEI-Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, January 25, 2005
Not one of these are a work of fiction. Puleeze refrain from claiming Crichton is "just a novelist." Saying that Michael Crichton is just a fiction writer is like claiming that Arthur C. Clark is just a science fiction writer.
Michael "attended Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude in 1964.[3] Crichton was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, obtaining an M.D. in 1969, and did post-doctoral fellowship study at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970." Michael Crichton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
tashi deleks,
M |
Sorry that I took so long to get back to you on this. But, alas, work, school and personal life have intervened frequently over the past few months. Internet message board had to take a back seat.
The biggest problem I have with Michael Crichton is that he claims that the politicization of science is a big problem because it selectively cherry picks the data to further an underlying aim in a particular field of study. And then to prove this, he goes out and selectively cherry picks studies that back up his thesis.
I agree with him that there are examples present in science where politics get involved. It happens in every field of human endeavor, some more than others. Science, unlike many other fields, actually has a way to try and limit the effect of this: peer-review. And a vast majority of the peer-reviewed literature does not support his claim that anthropogenic global warming/climate change is non-existent.
He recognizes this, but claims its not a problem due to two things: 1) over-reliance upon computer models and 2) consensus does not prove truth. I actually have some sympathy for these two points, but I think he overextends himself mightily to think that these points mean AGW is bunk.
First, let's look at computer models. I won't deny that there are problems with the models, and to be honest, no one should be surprised by this. Proper experimentation would mean that we would have to replicate our experiments. Since we only have one planet Earth, and the costs, feasibility and ethical issues that would arise with tinkering with the Earth's atmosphere make it impossible for us to directly test AGW hypotheses. So, we have to rely on models to help us try to do that. They are by no means perfect and I'm sure there are some errors that will continue to be found in them. But, all that being said, the majority of them haven't been that far off.
Now, if we only relied upon models to research AGW, the theory would be very weak. But, that isn't the case. There are a host of different data sources that support AGW from many different realms of science and they all suggest the same thing: the best explanation for warming/climate changes is due to carbon dioxide increase and most of this carbon dioxide increase is sue to man-made activities.
Yet, Crichton never really attacks these data sets. Almost all of his arguments deal with the models, which is far and away the weakest of the supporting data sets for AGW. And the ones that try to go after the science that I've seen are pretty damn weak (the one that comes to mind is one where he states carbon dioxide only makes up a small percentage of the atmosphere so it just CAN'T make that big of a difference). Sorry, but that doesn't fly. If he wants to be far more convincing, he needs to show why other, much stronger data sets are incorrectly interpreted. I have yet to see any skeptic scientist, let alon Mr. Crichton, do this.
Another of his big themes is that consensus doesn't equal the truth. Again, I have sympathy for this argument, yet I think it is logically flawed in how he uses it. It's true that there have been sea changes in scientific thought when one scientist, much mocked and ridiculed, bucked "the system" and proved to everyone that he was right and changed how people looked at the world. Galileo, Darwin, and Wegener come to mind. Crichton often uses the examples of plate tectonics and global cooling to show how the consensus was wrong. So since this happened, how can consensus be trusted?
I know that consensus is sometimes wrong. But, more often than naught, I do trust it (I still read up on it, though). why would I do such a "stupid" thing? Well, it's because consensus is much, much more often right than it is wrong. Yet, Crichton never gives examples of this, and there are MANY. To put it in words that a friend of mine said once, "just because someone laughed at one of your jokes, it doesn't mean you're funny". Crichton uses his argument to paint all consensus as inherently flawed due to a few cases, when in reality, these cases are exceptions rather than the rule.
So, in many ways, I think Crichton is a case study in the very thing he argues against. He uses part of the story to inflame public opinion for his side of the story. That's why it is better to have these talks based on the science, rather than the messenger (which was the whole point I was trying to get with my flippant comment).