posted
Anyone read the new Crichton novel? My dad got it for me as a Christmas gift. I just finished it. I have two immediate reactions.
Good:
Crichton always does an amazing amount of research for his books. Apparently he spent three years studying to write this one, and he seems to have used the time wisely. I'm sure you could get a degree with the amount of study that he gave his topic. I'm always impressed with the level of expertese he develops in the subjects of his books... and they're all different. He's not like Grisham, who has one subject he's knowledgable in and writes all his books on that subject. Crichton always starts from scratch, and that's impressive.
Bad:
I felt like I was reading The Celestine Prophecy for most of the duration of the novel. It seemed like he had an agenda and a lesson to teach, but rather than writing an essay, he invented flat characters, heroes and straw-men, and put his essay into wooden dialogue. There were some action scenes, but none of them were all that gripping, even by the standards he's set in his previous work, and they were all as brief as possible so that he could get back on his pulpit.
[edit: Not that I necessarily disagree with what he was preaching, but the story he spun around it seemed very awkward in its attempt to disguise the lecture.]
I just finished the book, and I don't want to get into anything more detailed than this until I have a chance to digest. Just wondering if anyone else has read this book, and if there is any feedback on the positions and arguments found in it.
posted
I read it, after I had already read the essay Crichton published on the internet a while ago, so I knew about his message going into it. Therefore, when he used the characters as mouthpieces in his lectures, I thought it was funny, rather than annoying. I mean, I read the book because I wanted to hear the lecture, not because I was looking for something else.
I especially enjoyed Crichton's personal message at the end, where he makes it clear that he's not anti-environmentalist, and that he is not attempting to "prove" that global warming is not taking place. What he is trying to show is that the current global warming scare is based on terrible science that treats hypotheses as though they were proof, and that often places political considerations ahead of the evidence.
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posted
No, they shouldn't. I just read it, and it's a shoddy book full of vacant mouthpieces spouting paranoia and misrepresentations of scientific thought. The "villain" is ludicrous. The motives ascribed to the scientific establishment are blatantly offensive. And throughout, the whole thing reads like a love letter to the ignorant.
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posted
As a novel, it may not be that good. But as a treatise on certain forms of environmentalism, it is, if nothing else, well researched and consistent.
I freely admit to being out of my depth when it comes to serious detailed enviromental concerns, particularly at the level discussed in the book. So Tom's critique interested me. I don't know how I'd respond to many of the points Crichton made, but I'm sure there are people out there more knowledgable than the straw-men he wrote in as antagonists. Tom seems to be one of them. So if you have any more specific details about why you found this book, as a treatise, to be so flawed and insulting, I'd be very interested in hearing them.
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I don't want to sound like I'm trying to bait you. I just remember reading the book and wondering how a well-informed environmentalist would respond to the evidence presented. You sounded in your last post like you have some good info on the presence and impact of global climate change, and I'd be sincerely interested in hearing it.
posted
I've always been suspicious of Tom Clancy's books after conversations with my Dad, who was a Marine Corps Captain and is a major military armament/history buff.
Reason being, a lot of the technical gobbledy-gook Clancy spouts about military weaponry just isn't real, or is often confused (a description of one plane actually being for a completely different one, for instance).
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posted
And Amka -- if the book is like what Tom says it is, it doesn't matter how much you'd like it to be true .
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What's really funny is that, despite your bump, I didn't see it until just now, when I actually had to rely on Hatrack's God-awful search engine to find this thread. And I even had to search twice.
I'll try to find a decent run-down of some of the issues with the science in State of Fear for you. Part of it is that, as someone married to an environmental scientist, I couldn't help but notice that just about nothing in his depiction of the scientific establishment rang true to me; it failed the smell test terribly. (I'll admit to a certain bias against obvious straw men. *shudder*)
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This link and the related links seem to sum up most of what I'd say fairly well, although I wouldn't always use their wording. Their citations are pretty good, though: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=76
(Note: the related links are actually pretty relevant. I've quoted this because it makes a good "entry point" for the review, since it links to most of the other appropriate entries.)
posted
Yeah, based on a quick read through of Crichton's article and the pages linked there (not really needed, Crichton was really blatant), all Crichton does is construct some straw men, and then unsurprisingly knock them down.
Plus mouth some gibberish; I love his statement about how consensus is not science. Sure, but consensus among scientists (also known as experts) reflects how authoritative an opinion may be considered. It doesn't affect the truth of the statement, but it affects how well we, as non-experts, can evaluate the likelihood of the truth.
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posted
But Crichton isn't standing on solitary or shaky ground. There are problems with the equations, extrapolations and elaborations in the global warming theory.
I'm not completely sold on it being bunkum, but even I have to ask, "What matters more in the argument: consensus or verifiable measurements? Is the model more powerful than the figures?"
posted
There are some possible issues with global warming, yes.
However, Crichton both makes them out to be more than they are, and tackles essentially none of them. He keeps making all these attacks which are founded on fantasy (I love his stuff about not verifying the models against data and the people doing the model testing being the same as the ones making the models, when as noted in the linked material there are multitudes of papers about verifying the models against data and by people testing other people's models).
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quote:What he is trying to show is that the current global warming scare is based on terrible science that treats hypotheses as though they were proof, and that often places political considerations ahead of the evidence.
My impression is that, especially in the US, most political considerations work in the opposite direction; anything that implies even the slightest uncertainty in the climate models is eagerly and uncritically adopted by the politicians and then gleefully used to dismiss or denigrate the entire theory of global warming. But maybe I'm wrong and any evidence for global warming is so eagerly and greatfully received by the political establishment that scientists go out of their way to falsify evidence and invent theories that would satisfy the tree-hugging eco-whackos that is the Bush administration. Who knows?
posted
Tristan -- that's pretty much how I'd sum it up (the bit about politicians taking even the vaguest evidence suggesting a problematic point as a complete refutation).
Also, I'd like to retract my initial statement re: Crichton and technological innacuracy (the one about previous works). For some reason his choice of title made my mind jump to conversations my Dad and I have had about Clancy.
posted
Are you saying that the environmental movement has not been politicized? Or that there isn't political pressure from either side, just because of who currently occupies the White House?
The reason I'm looking for contrary opinions on this issue isn't because I'm desperate to discredit Crichton. Based upon what I've seen, I've always been inclined to view these issues somewhere near how he's arguing them, so his book (narrative flaws excepted) didn't bother me that much. I believe in recycling, putting moderate environmental restrictions on manufacturing and commercial enterprises, driving fuel efficient cars, spending tax money on alternative energy research, not littering and things like that. But I also believe that fanatical environmentalism is as dangerous and politically motivated as wanton disregard. And it's not because I'm a tool of capitolism or a captain of industry. It just makes sense to me.
However, on an issue as political as environmentalism, if anyone assumes that their side is using pure and virtuous science and the only pressure to spin data comes from the enemy, they're fooling themselves. That's why it's important to look at data and spin from both sides, regardless of what you're personally inclined to believe. Just because it may be in the best interest of some commercial enterprises to see the end of environmentalism doesn't mean that the other side can't have ulterior motives of their own.
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posted
"But I also believe that fanatical environmentalism is as dangerous and politically motivated as wanton disregard."
I think the whole reason Crichton had to resort to forcing his straw men villains into ludicrously creating fake disasters is that extreme environmentalism is not in general as dangerous or politically motivated as wanton disregard, and therefore much less likely to blow things up in a narratively interesting way.
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posted
Sure, there may not be any environmentalists actually planning to start tsunamis or kill cub scout troops. But when's the last time an industrialist resorted to evil James Bond supervillainy? Just because the narrative events in that book aren't realistic doesn't mean that there aren't some shady things going on in both camps.
I know your wife is in this field, and I'm not trying to say anything about her personal integrity. I know there are people in every political category who get involved in issues like this in an honest effort to do good. But there are obvious axes to grind on both sides of this issue, and sometimes belief in scientifically irrelevant but politically related issues can get in the way of objectivity.
Tom, I honestly respect you and your wife. Your political views differ from mine on many points (and converge with mine on many other points). But I do believe that you are both intelligent, well-informed, sincere, and in every other way the opposite of Nicholas Drake, Peter Evans and all of Crichton's other vile supervillains and ignorant plot-lackeys. So I think you know where I stand and, knowing how personally involved Christy is with this issue, I'm going to drop this argument before I imply anything about your character that I don't intend to. However, if you have any other information about the evidence presented in the book, I'd still be interested in reading it.
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posted
"So I think you know where I stand and, knowing how personally involved Christy is with this issue, I'm going to drop this argument before I imply anything about your character that I don't intend to."
Hey, it's okay. But let's face it: you're not close to the "front lines" on this issue, and neither is Crichton. It's very easy for someone who isn't involved on a daily basis with the people who're doing this sort of research to speculate that they're buying into it as a function of orthodoxy or promoting it out as a self-interested scare tactic. But the thing is, that's not the case, and I can tell you from personal experience that I have never met a scientist working in environmental research who fits the mold into which Crichton is attempting to pigeonhole the entire field.
It's like saying that all Mormons are involved in a hostile scam to bilk the country of its money and/or steal souls for the devil; it requires that you not actually know any Mormons to entertain the thought even for a second.
Crichton isn't merely saying that we should look skeptically at environmental data. He can't just say that, because the simple fact is that everyone already looks skeptically at environmental data, and no one looks at that data more skeptically than environmental scientists themselves. It's a fundamental principle of science. And so that's what he's really saying: he's accusing environmental scientists of violating the fundamental principles of science, essentially accusing them of lacking integrity in order to advance or buy into a given agenda.
Were this argument just confined to the granola-munching environuts out there -- and they do exist -- who don't know more about the science than soundbytes and got into environmentalism because they saw a TV movie about pandas and dated a guy who read something by Derrida, he'd be right. But he'd also be ignored, because everyone already dismisses those people and their opinions.
What he's doing is saying that the scientists themselves are deliberately cooking their books, making up numbers to fit and basically avoiding the traditions of peer review and rigorous control on which we've built the Western research tradition. And that simply isn't true.
I mean, let's just look for a second at what my wife is currently doing for a living: among other things, she's spent the last two years helping a scientist develop a better test to get more accurate readings of nitrate levels without possibly introducing other contaminants into the sample.
Think about that for a second. The crux of her research is all about improving a fairly minor measurement yardstick so that it returns better results for future tests done by other people. And it's not like she and her boss are the only two people doing that sort of thing; it's essential to the practice of modern science. If a better test or more accurate model is out there, if a model can't explain the data or doesn't seem to work, there are people who'll devote their research and their lab and even their lives to just making it work a little better for the next guy. In that sort of environment, it's really hard to make the case that scientists have been systematically fooled by a selfish, greedy political agenda.
posted
We were watching the Scientific American Explorer last night because it was about clean cars and hydrogen, and next week is going to be about the impact of global warming on Alaska. My husband mentioned this book and what he had heard is that Crichton focuses on the bias that arises from knowing who has funded your study, and knowing you can get more funding next time by reaching a certain conclusion.
The solution would be if funding and publication could be done in a milieau where no strings are attached and your work will be published even if it goes against the agenda of the people who funded it. Otherwise you get messes like the Vioxx death findings cover-up.
I may be remembering wrong, but I didn't get any of the scientist-bashing from the books. What I got was movement-bashing. I don't remember any of the villains being scientists. They were all lawyers and celebrities. I do remember a paragraph in an appendix about how scientists in general feel that it is important to please sponsors. But the only environmental scientist in the actual novel that I remember was the guy in Iceland, and he was written as a clear-cut hero. So I didn't get the scientist-bashing.
The point I think he was making is that there are a lot of data floating around, and it's possible to spin it in either direction. The villains weren't the ones producing the evidence. The villains were the ones twisting the evidence to fit their preconceived political ideas.
I've known a lot of people involved in environmentalism. I know people who have marched on Washington. I know members of The Sierra Club and other environmental action groups. But, unless you count the limited contact I've had with your wife here, I don't know a single environmental scientist. And from my point of view, the scientific front line and the environmental front line are a long way from each other. The environmental movement that I've seen is more concerned with socialism and anti-corporatism and the war and all kinds of other political issues than it is with any real environmental concerns. In the environmental front line that I've been near, actual environmentalism is only used to produce catch-phrases and emotional hooks that suck people in to a whole peripherally-related agenda. And these people aren't ready to look at data skeptically or listen to alternate views.
That's what I got from the novel. There were a lot of data presented on both sides. And I didn't get the idea that environmental science is corrupt. The point I got was one I learned in high school debate: that good evidence can be used to prove anything. And you'd better be really careful accepting evidence selected and prepared by any organization as large and powerful as industry or the environmental lobby.
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posted
But the problem, Speed, is that scientists also agree that the environmental lobby is, for the most part, right about the conclusions they're drawing.
And if they aren't in a good position to know, who is? Politicians and corporations who stand to suffer if we start aggressively implementing environmental policy?
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pooka: We're on track for one of the largest ozone holes on record. 2002 was surprisingly small, and 2003 was enormous. On average, it continues to grow -- and is in fact beginning to cause serious problems for people living in the extreme Southern Hemisphere.
posted
I think you'll find that most scientists have problems with extreme environmentalism.
Its important to understand that gatherings like the one where massive consensus was reached are not gatherings of environmentalists, but of scientists.
These are acknowledged experts in making the sorts of evaluations we're talking about. They are in most cases given large sums of money by various organizations to user their skills to do so.
Disregarding their results because they come to a consensus, as Crichton seems to be making the argument we should do, should make people laugh Crichton off the stage.
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quote:Disregarding their results because they come to a consensus, as Crichton seems to be making the argument we should do, should make people laugh Crichton off the stage.
This, to my reading of the article, does not seem to be what he's saying. Rather, he's saying that consensus in and of itself should not be taken as proof, especially about conjectures of change over time.
If he means what you said in the quotation above, then he's an idiot.
quote:On average, it continues to grow -- and is in fact beginning to cause serious problems for people living in the extreme Southern Hemisphere.
Indeed. If I ultimately decide to settle permanently in that part of the world I will never exit my house without first bathing in sunscreen.
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quote: But the problem, Speed, is that scientists also agree that the environmental lobby is, for the most part, right about the conclusions they're drawing.
See, that is why I asked for some info on the specifics of the book and the evidence it used. Because Crichton seemed to be using hard evidence from actual scientists and world history to back up many of his assertions. I understand that he could be spinning his data in the same way that he accuses the environmental lobby of doing. That's why I was looking for an insider's view on the points that he made. Maybe some alternate evidence, or some examples of how he took his evidence out of context or misinterpreted the texts. The article you linked had a couple interesting points, but they seemed to leave the bulk of his arguments untouched. Arguments such as the difficulty of measuring increasing water levels and the lack of evidence for such, the differing measurements in neighboring cities for average temperature, how difficult it is to compensate for the heat-island effect, how the environment changes without any help from us anyway, how we're unable to control or protect the environment, and how our efforts to do so do as much harm as good. Those are the arguments from the book I can think of off the top of my head... I know there were more. He seemed to have some pretty good data from scientific journals and texts that made it look like scientists don't support environmental hysteria. Obviously, I haven't been able to read all his source material--I do have an outside life and a different profession that prevent me from keeping up on all the various studies. So a little point of view from an insider or a link to a differing analysis would be very interesting.
One other question, while we're on the topic. What do you and your wife think of Patrick Moore? He was a founder of Greenpeace, then left when it was hijacked by political activists and went out on his own to fight for the environment, but against many of the things that Greenpeace and other mainstream environmentalist movements came to stand for. Apparently he has a Ph.D in Ecology. If anyone wants to know who he is, here is his website, and I found this article and this one particularly interesting. Anyway, from what I can gather he seems to be on the same general side of the fence as Crichton. Just wondering if you've heard of him and what your impressions are.
posted
Speed, did you follow this link from the site Tom posted? It addresses most of the points you're listing.
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posted
I don't understand why environmentalists don't attack global climate change (which is probably all around a better name than global warming) from an economic stand point. Most politicians and industrialists really only care about money anyway, so why not hit them where it hurts?
There's billions to be made in renewable energy technologies, and there's billions to be lost if they stick with fossil fuels for much longer. Tap their wallet, not their heart.
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posted
I couldn't find a single thing on Moore's site regarding global warming .
I would say that puts him on some side or another of a completely different fence than Crichton, pretty much. Furthermore, most of Moore's arguments are based on modern science, not in opposition to it (unlike Crichton's), and while he is also against radical environmentalism, he sees radical environmentalism not as a part of science (as Crichton seems to think), but in opposition to it.
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posted
Dagonee -- I don't know what else he could be saying, as he's saying he disagrees with what the guy was saying, but all the guy was saying is that when a lot of scientists have a strong consensus people should sit up and take notice.
quote:"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…"
That's all the guy says that Crichton felt worth quoting. Then he goes into a rant against what he calls consensus science
quote: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. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
There you have him, explicitly saying that we should pay less attention to results that a broad consensus of scientists support.
As I said, Crichton should be laughed off the stage.
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posted
There's a segment in the "Environmentalism for the 21st Century" article that deals with climate change. There are some divergent opinions... Moore is prepared to give more creedence to climate change and the CO2/fossil fuel/global warming relationship than Crichton (although Crichton doesn't say that climate change isn't happening, he just debates how much we know about the cause, the degree and the impacts.) But this is what I found interesting:
quote: Climate change is not about scientific certainty; it is about the evaluation and management of risk.... Is it worth reducing fossil fuel consumption by 60 percent to avoid global warming? Should we add the risk of massive nuclear energy construction to offset carbon dioxide emissions? What does "worth doing away" really mean? Is it possible that global warming might have more positive effects than negative ones?
This is what I meant by their being in the same general area. From my understanding, both of them seem to be distancing themselves from the shreiking fanatics who say that we must immediately stop every trace of industry and technology, and by so doing we can keep the Earth at the exact same temperature forever. They don't share the exact same point of view, but it seems to me that they're closer to each other than to the mainstream of organized Environmentalism.
Of course, he doesn't give nearly as much time to climate change as he does to some other issues that he thinks are more important. I found the whole essay quite interesting.
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posted
"I didn't realize the ozone hole was seasonal. Or am I misunderstanding that?"
The ozone hole is seasonally periodic, and is affected by both climate and atmospheric events in a way that also makes it annually variable.
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quote: From my understanding, both of them seem to be distancing themselves from the shreiking fanatics who say that we must immediately stop every trace of industry and technology, and by so doing we can keep the Earth at the exact same temperature forever. They don't share the exact same point of view, but it seems to me that they're closer to each other than to the mainstream of organized Environmentalism.
They are indeed closer to each other than to shrieking fanatics arguing that we must immediately stop every trace of industry and technology to keep the Earth at the exact same temperature forever.
What I find baffling, however, is that you seem to equate that position with mainstream environmentalism. Perhaps you are using a definition of mainstream that I have never heard before.
quote:I couldn't find a single thing on Moore's site regarding global warming.
There is some stuff about global warming on the page dedicated to support Lomberg against the evil Scientific American. It's Lomberg's words though, with which Moore naturally may or may not agree. However, if he wanted to be unbiased he should host (or link to) the rebuttal of Lomberg's response as well.
posted
Those were seperate but related statements. The organized Environmentalist movement that I've had most experience with doesn't consist solely of the fanatics (although some of them are involved), but they seem to be a lot closer to that point of view than they do to Moore or Crichton.
By the way, Tom, do you know much about Moore? What do you think?
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When something has been scientifically proven, or at least substantially demonstrated, you don't have to cite anyone's opinion. You can cite experimental evidence. Even with something as hotly contested as evolution, when someone questions it, we look at the fossil record, the results of modern breeding practices, links in genetic code, etc, and say, "See? Look at all this evidence."
When someone questions global warming, we cite global opinion because the evidence itself is nebulous, and pulls in a lot of different directions. There are so many ill-understood factors involved in long-term climate change that we still have an incredibly hard time making accurate predictions of the future.
Maybe the earth is getting slightly warmer, but maybe not. Maybe temperature changes over the past century relate to CO2 emissions, but maybe they result from other human-caused factors, or completely natural factors that have nothing to do with us. Maybe altering human behavior can reverse the current trend, whatever it is, but maybe it can't. That's what the evidence says. Some computer models, estimates, hypotheses, and votes indicate that there is a preventable human-caused global-warming crisis in the near future, but the evidence doesn't actually go nearly that far.
What if, for instance, the earth is warming on its own, independent of any human impact, and that warming will result in greater crop yields and prosperity for the human race? What, then, should be done about it? Anything?
What if human-caused CO2-related global warming is taking place, but the only measure that will slow it down significantly is the complete dismantling of our industrial society? Is that worth the cost? And if not, are ineffective half-measures worth pursuing at all?
What if the earth is merely coming out of its current cooling phase (the "little ice age"), and its "natural" or "proper" temperature is actually a couple of degrees higher than it is now, as it was a few hundred years ago? Does it then make sense to panic or go to drastic measures to stop a natural return to relative "normalcy"?
(I put all those words in quotes because, of course, earth has no "natural" or "normal" climate condition. It is different every century, every millenium, every eon, and is in a constant state of flux. What I mean is that if people a few hundred years ago could handle a certain temperature, and if people several thousand years ago could handle another, what is so abnormal and terrible about our returning to one of their conditions?)
What if earth is warming drastically on its own, independent of us, with disastrous results, and there is nothing we can do to stop it? Does that warrant a different kind of response?
We don't have the answers to any of these questions, but the current politically-enforced "consensus" prevents anyone from addressing the true range of possiblities without getting dismissed as a crackpot. We're creating the same kind of orthodoxy that plagued Galileo, and it's doing harm to our ability to conduct actual science.
posted
You'll find that the scientists who develop a consensus tend to publish a report, which indicates the evidence they feel justify that consensus.
IOW, "consensus science" just doesn't work like what you're describing.
Furthermore, a lot of this consensus building has only happened in recent years because politicians keep saying the evidence isn't clear -- when you can get hundreds of highly respected scientists to agree on something, the evidence is usually pretty darn clear! (which is the point of the consensus statements, to underscore how clear the evidence is).
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posted
I think the appeal to consensus only occurs in the politics of what should be done about global warming. And this is because the main actors there are politicians, who just aren't qualified to understand the evidence. Global warming is a much more subtle phenomenon than evolution, after all, and the evidence for it is spread out in a hundred journals and thousands of articles.
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posted
Granted, I'm a game designer, not a scientist, so I'm basing a lot of my impressions here on other folks' statements I've read over the past decade or so. But I find the dissenters very persuasive, particularly given that our track record for predicting the weather is already so terrible
I guess I might gravitate naturally into the skeptics' corner on most issues like this, saying, "Wait a minute ... HOW sure are we about this? How many different opinions have we had on this subject over the past few decades? How likely is it that we happen to be dead-on correct right now?"
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posted
I'm also concerned because I read books like Jared Diamond's Collapse and Jane Jacobs's Dark Age Ahead, and so much of a civilization's survival depends on making the RIGHT decisions about changing circumstances.
It's easy for us to look at past fallen societies and say, "Those idiots did THIS when disaster struck, or they got distracted by THIS problem, when they should have been doing THIS, or they tried THIS solution, which only made the problem WORSE." But when it comes to our own problems, I think we're just as blind and foolish as many of the fallen societies of the past. My fear is that we're panicking and pouring most of our energy into preventing a single possible disaster that may or may not be disastrous ... while we are potentially missing, ignoring, or mishandling the REAL threats that are eventually going to clobber us.
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posted
You're making a classic mistake of comparing climate and weather. Climate is a reflection of the general nature of the weather over a large period of time. Think of it this way -- we cannot predict with any reasonable accuracy the movements of a single stock over the course of an hour or two in almost all cases (weather). However, we can still say with confidence that stocks in general will be worth more in ten years than they are today (climate).
Also, the reality of global warming does not depend upon our ability to predict the future so much as our ability to evaluate the past.
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posted
I submit that while our knowledge of the past is helpful in informing our predictions, we do not yet understand it well enough to know how significant human impact has been, compared with natural factors, or how changing human and natural factors right now will affect the general trend.
Also, I would like to know how accurate Crichton's analysis of the Urban Heat Island problem is.
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posted
And by the way, I hope you noticed the smiley after my statement about weather I do understand the concept you're talking about. But I am definitely curious about our track record for predicting climate, and whether or not we even have one.
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