What's Wrong With Global Warming Skepticism?

Well, nothing really, per se. Some of my best colleagues are global warming skeptics. Most of them don't know enough to have an intelligent opinion, but that rarely stops anyone. Informed skepticism, of course is an essential component of science.

Unfortunately though, the principal players in the anti-global warming crusade are rarely either innocents or informed critics. Most of them are religiously or ideologically motivated zealots who know and understand little about modern climate science. A few are old geezers and soreheads who don't like the kind of science climate has become. The most despicable are hacks and flacks on the take from big oil and others with a stake in the status quo.

Michael Crichton doesn't really fit into any of these categories, except sorehead. He was trained as a physician, but made a fortune writing science fiction books and movies, some of which were quite excellent. The best of his stuff takes a scientific idea with a bit of credibility and weaves it into a compelling drama. Jurrasic Park (the first one) is the canonical example.

He entered the climate scene by writing a book in which radical environmentalists are the sinister villians, and also by giving a talk at Caltech that he called "Aliens cause global warming". This is the (in)famous talk in which he lambasted "consensus science." Since that time he has been a favorite with right-wing congressmen and other Kool-aid peddlars. An excerpt from his speech:

...Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists…"

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks...

So what's the matter with Crichton's argument? Almost everything. The examples he chooses, the logic he deploys, and the supposed facts he exhibits. If you want to check out the details, read his speech, and then examine this detailed demolition by Reasic. Not only is Chrichton wrong in almost evey particular, his whole argument is specious.

The two-bit summary: there have been times in history when what most scientists believed turned out to be wrong. Therefore, if most scientists believe something, it must be wrong. He illustrates his point by bringing up a number of speculative scientific ideas and claiming them to have been disproved or worthless. Except when dealing with ancient history, he mostly is either wrong or just guilty of baseless speculation himself.

He ignores the current scientific consensus on such matters as relativity, quantum theory, natural selection, and the germ theory of most disease - presumeably because they don't fit his illogic.

So why did I call him a sorehead? As a Hollywood mogul, he understands well the art of punishing his foes. One scientist guilty of refuting him got the honor of having his name used for a child molester (or some similarly heinous character) in the following Crichton novel.

I guess that Crichton, not content with fame, fortune, and a passel of wives and starlets, decided late in life that he wanted to be considered a serious person. Well, he made it all the way to seriously deranged.