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Was he a climate denier or a critic of the emerging scientism in the climate change debate? There are unintended consequences to arriving at the right conclusi
by evv555 4y ago
Was he a climate denier or a critic of the emerging scientism in the climate change debate? There are unintended consequences to arriving at the right conclusion(climate change is real) for the wrong reasons. It undermines societies ability to move forward viable solutions.
- notahacker 4y agoNo, he was a full blown denier, fond of making outlandish claims like the Antarctic ice area actually increasing, misrepresenting what the scientists had actually predicted in order to claim their predictions had failed, as well as writing an entertaining-but-silly novel about eco-terrorists faking natural disasters full of nonsense gotchas like "look, the temperature record in this place is lower than it was x years ago" He just was smart enough to caveat it with "maybe the world is getting a little bit warmer but we can't be sure why" and to focus on attacking the notion of scientific consensus and modelling rather than defending alternative hypotheses in any detail.
- xenonite 4y agoI rather see his story as a reminder that scientific studies are often used to "prove" a claim, rather than openly looking for the outcome.
- evv555 4y agoI don't agree that this is an accurate characterization of Crichton's perspective.
- notahacker 4y agoSuuuure, he was actually trying to ensure society moved forward viable solutions to anthropogenic climate change by repeatedly asserting there was actually no evidence of its existence, misrepresenting accurate past predictions of warming in order to discredit them, even writing a book in which the natural disasters attributed to climate change were actually part of a murderous conspiracy to fake it, with a great big long appendix about the dangers of scientists advising government on public policy when contrarians like him could be doing that instead...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]