ShareI’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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