Michael Crichton’s thoughts on climate change
I’ve always been rather impressed by Michael Crichton.
He is rather good at hitting cultural nerve spots and has told more than a few good stories. He’s the only person to simultaneously have the best selling book, movie and tv show in America. He’s also, like myself, someone who wants to analyze himself the actual verifiable data, rather than the opinions of people who’ve talked to the people who understand data.
What then to make of Michael’s disbelief in global warming as a crisis?
As Michael tells Charlie Rose (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2663847011110488414&q=charlie+rose+michael+crichton&hl=en) and as you can read on Michael’s website (http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speeches/index.html), his survey of the evidence indicates that humans have had a strong influence on CO2 levels, have resulted in the temperature of the world increasing slightly, but also that the level of impact humans have had to date is fairly negligible, and that computer models are completely unreliable as tools to predict weather for the next 5 years, much less the next 100. He points out that all of the global warming crisis talk is driven by long term projections done through computer models with unverifiable assumptions modeling something that is supremely complex to begin with. Kind of like the Bush administration trying to predict what the budget deficit will be in 2030.
These are all good points, and things I’ve wondered about before. One counterargument is that sometimes it’s hard to model short term behavior, but you can model long term trends.
However, I haven’t taken the time to really dig into the evidence, or how climate models are put together, so I can’t say whether I agree or disagree with anyone on this subject definitively. What is clear to me though is that more and more people are convinced that global warming is a crisis, and even if Mr. Crichton is wrong, I’m impressed that he took the time to look at the evidence and think it through himself.
Looks like I’m going to have to do the same.
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7 comments
Saying that computer models aren’t reliable at predicting climate change so human driven climate change is a myth is like saying that because some methods of carbon dating have been done innacurately, the world is only 6000 years old. Chricton, like Creationists, is worshipping the God of the Gaps by pointing to Science’s gap to inject doubt about the obvious.
In the case of carbon dating of fossils, there are numerous different radioactive tests that provide a consistent overall picture of the age of the earth, and only Christian young-earth “scientists” ideologically committed to their a priori assumptions are unable to admit the obvious.
Similarly, computer models aren’t the only method of tracking carbon’s influence on climate, and only Big Oil’s paid “scientists” and committed anti-environmentalists like Chricton (See http://cdfe.org/religion.htm for examples of his ‘damn hippies’ world-view) can pretend that they’re not denying a clear and present danger to human survival.
Alex:
Interesting rant; as much for what it isn’t as for what it is.
If you want to refute an argument, it is generally more effective to:
1)Stick to the subject at hand,
2)Take the necessary space to explain your opposing argument completely,
3)provide ample references to support your points.
I haven’t made up my mind on the subject, and I am looking for good discussion on climate change. Your little attack of logorrhea adds nothing, and detracts in the same way that heckling interferes with debates.
Get some facts and join the discussion in a reasonable way, or SHUT UP.
read his novel State of Fear. fictionalized but the data is real. i looked it up.
Crichton isn’t saying that computer modeling isn’t reliable ever. He says he asked for and couldn’t get the assumptions and formula used to generate computer models which are being used to predict long term changes in climate. He suggests that it is inherently difficult if not impossible to model phenomenon such as long term changes in weather because of how much feedback and complex cause and effect are in such systems. I do recognize that computer models are used all the time to model complex systems. To my knowledge they aren’t good predictors of things that iterate multiple times unless significant assumptions are made.
[...] my prior post on Michael Crichton, I wrote about how Mr. Crichton had taken the time to evaluate the computer models that have led so [...]
Nice job finding an important and very confusing point that deserves discussion. I found State of Fear to be compelling when I read it, but afterwards I began to learn about the specific problems with his arguments.
It is true that Crichton cites real data. The story is far from over by stating that, however.
Here is a link to scientific criticism of Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”:
72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:semSCzzqSgcJ:www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-…
This also comes as a PDF (as you’ll see mentioned in the html, or can find here: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf).
This is a response from James Hansen of the Columbia University Earth Institute and Goddard Institute for Space Studies, someone whose congressional testimony was personally criticized by Crichton in “State of Fear”.
I have seen similar refutation of nearly every point in State of Fear. I found the book to be convincing when reading it, but not after looking into the details. For example, his whole story about DDT is wrong. It was banned in the US, but was not banned by most developing countries, or not for very long. The bans that did take place were for the use of DDT in agriculture, not for “vector control”, which in this case means mosquito control.
Some of the resurgence of malaria is due to resistance developing, which was predicted by Rachel Carson rather than due to elimination of DDT use. Some resurgence of malaria is due to US aid being withheld unless DDT was not used.
Rachel Carson wrote about the role of agricultural DDT in polluting ground water and killing wildlife. This is true (that she wrote it and that it happens). Birds, fish, etc. are often very sensitive to pesticides. For example, the Bush administration is currently being sued to obey Federal law and the Endangered Species Act by protecting Northwest salmon from pesticides that are fatal in extremely tiny amounts, but which are not being regulated, in violation of the law.
Rachel Carson was correct about these things, as documented by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and shown in Federal court. However, she was not talking about the use of DDT as a protective agent against mosquitoes, where it is largely sprayed on the walls of rooms and homes. This method needs to be coupled with draining of swamps to fight mosquitoes effectively. In any event, the very problem that Carson wrote about, the unlimited agricultural use of DDT, undoubtedly sped up evolution of resistance to DDT. She is not some kind of monster, she was a journalist of high repute whose conclusions were proved correct in many cases. There are many sites devoted to describing how Rachel Carson has always been the target of smear campaigns by big chemical and agricultural businesses and right-wing organizations. Crichton just apes these old arguments in State of Fear, as it turns out.
Regarding global warming, see:
http://greenchemistry.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/ever-wonder-who-is-behind-dissenting-opinions-on-global-warming/
I’m not saying that anyone has to believe one “side” or the other, just that it is good to know who is behind the arguments. I happen to think that global warming is a serious issue, but I can’t prove it the way we might be able to 200-500 years from now, when it could be proved or disproved with more data. So, I don’t “know” I am right, I just think that the risk is too great to ignore.
Anyway, as was said above by others, we do need to decide for ourselves, and we need to do this based on our best judgment, not blind political or religious affiliation, based on our best abilities to judge the information and the trustworthiness of those presenting it.
Al Gore’s anonymous scientific “co-winners” of the Nobel prize don’t have a financial stake in this story the way oil companies do, They deserve to be listened to, at the very least.
Thanks for a great post
Jim
greenchemistry.wordpress.com/
Here is a article on Real Climate, a blog by some of the top climate scientists, that systematically refutes Crichton:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
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