ok..I'm listening
I really love Crichton and his style of writing.
Oh, those aliens. I thought MC might blame global warming on excessive refried bean consumption.
So...does this mean it isn't Bush's fault?
Excellent. Thanks for posting this. As a geoscientist, I fear for the future of science itself. Like so many power structures before it; the Roman Empire, the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, the British Indian Raj, the present-day scientific culture ("Big Science") will collapse from within, from its own failure to adhere to the fundamental principles that made science and scientific endevour a world-altering success.
Science is not consensus, grants are not proof, media coverage is not success, speculation is not theory.
For example, if I were literally the only person in the world who accepted the theory of plate tectonics, Wegener's continental drift, the continents would still move. All the media-savvy from PT Barnum to Rosie O'Donnell would not stop them.
Global Warming Ping!
ok..I'm listening
We are from the Really Big Government and we're here to help you.
Haitians?
This all becomes very clear once you read about "The Report from Iron Mountain".
Excellent article! Wow - stringing together all of those consensus arguments from the past and mocking them.
As an aerospace engineer, I often argued with my colleagues and management that just because everyone in the room (except for a few skeptics) agreed on something, that it was the right decision to make.
Often, the consensus of a "team" was the "lowest common denominator" opinion, and resulted in a wrong decision, a weak decision or a delayed decision. Of course, the skeptics in the group insisted on using the scientific mewthod and past experience rather than the consensus approach.
In these "consensual" decisions, it was often the loudest voice or the most aggressive personality in the "team" that drove the group to the "consensus." And they were usually proven wrong by future events and occasional catastrophic failures.
You can always tell when the skeptics are right - all of the "know-it-alls" disagree with them, try to coerce them to agree with the consensus opinion, call them names, and threaten their livelihood.
We need a million Michael Crichton's.
Brilliant. Bookmarked.
possibly something for your ping list. At any rate, a bump for later reading.
"But Sagan and his co-workers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later.This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold."
I used Sagan's nuclear winter article in the October 1983 Parade to destroy his scientific career. There was a whopping big lie in it which was career suicide. I spotted it immediately, investigated, and handed the results to America's foremost atmospheric scientist, who passed the word around in an effective fashion.
Sagan had intentionally misrepresented the opinions of his nuclear winter co-authors on a key point in his Parade article. They called him on it in a footnote in the December 1983 nuclear winter article in Science. I was alert to the issue, grasped the significance of the footnote, and found the source in a Livermore Lab study.
Then I bundled everything off to the atmospheric scientist and he used it to good effect. No one would work with Sagan, his grant applications were denied, etc., and he had to leave the science profession to take up a second career as a science-fiction writer.
More importantly, the scandal about Sagan mis-representing the views of his nuclear winter colleagues was so messy that the lefties gave up promoting the nuclear winter concept lest what Sagan did become a matter of public notice. This is why the apparently "hot" nuclear winter topic up and died in just a few months, and most especially its use as doomie propaganda died. Which was what I wanted.
And the scientist I worked with has continued bashing junk science in general, and now global warming in particular.
Excellent piece.
Bump!
LBT
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ping for later
Bump to read later.
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
I like Chriton but I think his worship at the altar of the religion of science needs more balance and realistic perspective vis a vis the horrors and emptiness of science as a redeeming social value.
Handing REACTIVE ATTACHMENT DISORDERED mean bully children atomic weapons to fling about with nihlism as a foundational value is not a very redemptive habit of science or of politics.
ping