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Crichton gave a lot of cover to climate-change denialism, though, speaking of Murray-Gellman effects.

• jimmygrapes 5y ago
  Less denialism than caution against jumping to conclusions and "consensus". He understood that to base society off of models with phenomenally low confidence has the potential to harm more than help, despite any good intentions.
  • paulmd 5y ago
    Of course, which is why there isn't "one" model, there's lots of models, and they provide a statistical range of expected possibilities. And of course Crichton knows that damned well himself. Applying impossibly high (or inappropriately high) standards of proof is a bog-standard rhetorical tactic - "how can we ever know anything with total certainty after all?". And yet the effects predicted by the consensus models have if anything proved to be too conservative, a possibility that the ever-so-open-minded Crichton never mentioned at all! Certainly that was always a possibility too, and yet he only cared to harp on the one possibility that was most comfortable to his mindset. And that's a kind of bias too - the willingness to dismiss presented evidence when it's inconvenient personally or politically. As they say, though, science advances one funeral at a time. It's just rather sad that it occurred at such a critical time in our planet's history, and that this particular individual had a megaphone and yet used it for such negative ends.
  • AlexCoventry 5y ago
    It's crazy to characterize those models as "phenomenally low confidence," and it seems at this stage that that ignorance is highly likely to get a lot of people killed. It was basic physical chemistry. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/michael-crichton-and-global-warming/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/michael-crichton-and-glob...