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Yes, very much so. He's been particularly active aginst the global warming crowd. His latest novel, State of Fear, is essentially a criticism of how our society has essentially shut down all scientific debate on global warming, and how it's just the latest "sky is falling" theory to emerge to scare the general population.

You can find some more of his views here. His speech in front of the senate commitee is particularly interesting.

For a more developed argument, please see Crichton's Aliens Cause Global Warming paper for the explosive and decisive attack against the method of scrutinizing scientific truth which you just proposed.

Science is based on consensus of opinion and may change over time.

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. --Michael Crichton, Aliens Cause Global Warming

Sounds like another Michael Crichton Novel!
http://www.crichton-official.com/

How much is hype and BS encouraged by the mass, liberal media? How much is hype on the other side by the oil companies? Fear and panic sells!

You should visit this site: http://www.junkscience.com/
Some of the graphs are very interesting -- http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/warming_by_de sign.htm
which shows that if you include ALL the recorded data, some areas are getting cooler, but the graphs you typically see: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/csci/ show an increase.

You should read Crichton's book State of Fear -- it will make you really think about this in a new light: http://www.crichton-official.com/
You might actually begin to take a critical view of what you read in the press.

Also, you should read http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number%20watch.htm -- what are they really measuring -- how are they cooking the numbers to mislead you (about most everything). Remember, bad press sells.... Death sells.... CNN had great ratings during the Gulf War. Many more watched the news following 9/11 and Katrina. Death and destruction and fear sell.

Is global warming real? There are many indicators that it is. But there are those that show some places are colder and that overall it is actually getting colder. We need more accurate data, more research, and more CRITICAL thinking, not mass fear and suppression -- ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ISSUE.

Actually overall ice depth in the Antarctic regions has steadily increased with the exception of one small ice shelf. Scientists have concluded that will all the C02 emissions from cars and factories it is still a microscopic amount. Michael Crichton does some in depth research and wrote a very provoking article upon environmentalism. You can read it here Enivronmentalism as Religion. As for SUV's not selling as well you can blame the increase in gasoline prices as the cause of that. The earth is in a natural warming period, what we have done since the Industrial Revolution has only increased the C02 slightly, which was on the rise before then. We do need to be careful of the resources we have, they are limited, but to say the earth is coming to an end anytime soon is silly. Check the research!

"Accepted scientific fact", eh? Perhaps you should read Crichton's article on consensus science (link found in a post by Rob Kaper). "Accepted scientific facts" aren't always right -- or established through objective means.

I get the point! We should have more pirates! Or even better, more people should read Michael Crichton's aliens cause global warming and discover the difference between correlation, consensus and actual science.

No one is saying the climate is not changing, criticism of the global warming theory raises uncertainty about the actual cause. Until that uncertainty has been eliminated, I'd rather invest in science and protection against rising sea levels and extreme weather (such as the Dutch Delta works) than investments in cleaner fossil fuels (Kyoto) which will only cause fossil fuels to be used for a longer time because industries won't reach their ROI for another few decades.

The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.

The Revenge of Gaia' is published by Penguin on 2 February.

Whoever modded this offtopic is obviously not a Michael Crichton fan.

I never said I believed what HAPPENED in the book, I said the facts (all given with references btw) made me doubt the now commonly accepted theory, because maybe it's not so well proven after all.

Also if you notice in the book, the people on the "environmental terrorist" side are all, aside from the main bad guys (Nick Drake etc), deeply commited to their cause and believe they are the good guys who are saving the planet...

After having read Michael Crichton's book, State of Fear, I am thinking people who pick sides on this issue just like to argue. Crichton is against claims of global warming. Everybody's got an agenda.

We don't even know how much we don't know about our planet. How about we try our best not to pollute the planet we live in while enjoying life?

PS I am not endorsing the book. It has an awkward plot and idiot characters listening to a lot of "explanations" by "experts".

I based my comment on http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches _quote05.html which at the very least is a quite interesting read.

No paper will flat-out lie because that would ultimately hurt sales, but papers and media outlets do and will push the truth as close as possible to sex, violence, or rock and role in a bid to increase sales.

No. Papers will, and do, flat-out lie. And they get caught at it. Regularly.

But the worse problem is that they don't care. Journalists are singularly careless with the truth when it comes to what they consider a good story.

The buying public does not like harsh realities. They won't buy truth.

Not to put to fine a point on it: Bullshit. The buying public thinks - or rather, thought - that mainstream journalism was telling them the truth. Of course, it wasn't, and never has.

The main problem isn't a particular agenda (though that is a problem); the problem is that journalists don't give a shit.

There's another paper by Michael Crichton that is much more to the point: The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. The point of this is that pretty much every newspaper article gets the important facts wrong in serious ways, but we tend to forget that fact.

Fiction and reader-affirmation sells. Truth and harsh facts don't.

How would you know? Have you ever tried that? It sounds to me like a pathetic justification for laziness and carelessness.

WombatControl posted a great link in one of the threads here. It's a lecture by Crichton, incidentally he has noticed the same problem with SciAm:

"...
Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?

When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down."

Full text at:
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches _quote04.html

Boris Debic (still too lazy to register).

Michael Chricton had an excellent piece on the decline of science reporting in an address at Caltech. His observations should be required reading because they get to the heart of what's wrong with "science" these days. (I use science in quote marks because it's only tangentally related to real science.) A sample:

Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends.

That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between what science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly-and defended.

Hell, I remember as a kid reading "50 Things You Can Do To Save The Earth" or some other such claptrap that argued that some massive amount of the rainforest disappared every day - and a little multiplication found that if such a figure were true the rainforest (and all forests on Earth) would have disappared in a year.

Whether "intelligent design" or "global warming", science is being used as a tool of politics - which is something it is not and never should be.

This seems to be a good a time as any to mention Michael Crichton's lecture at Caltech.

I think this is really worth a look....I find that the truth about global warming has become harder to discern because of the various agendas out there - to quote Micheal Crichton from 'State Of Fear' - 'But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.' Further interesting reading - http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches _quote04.html . . . . . .


You must be new to Slashdot.

The Crichton piece is against the acceptable herd-thinking that goes on here, so expect to be modded down.

I think this is really worth a look....I find that the truth about global warming has become harder to discern because of the various agendas out there - to quote Micheal Crichton from 'State Of Fear' - 'But as Alston Chase put it, "when the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.' Further interesting reading - http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches _quote04.html To quote Micheal Crichton - " But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on climate." What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them out. It is possible for an outside observer to ask serious questions about the conduct of investigations into global warming, such as whether we are taking appropriate steps to improve the quality of our observational data records, whether we are systematically obtaining the information that will clarify existing uncertainties, whether we have any organized disinterested mechanism to direct research in this contentious area."

Global warming is a farce... everyone has to read http://www.crichton-official.com/fear/index.html

anyone remember the good old drake equation?

Yep. Too bad it's so often abused by people who call the abuse "science." Crichton quote:

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion.

I can't disagree.

The key word here is opinion. There is very little factual evidence to support this. I'm not a pro-Big Business kind of guy, and I think that pollution is a problem, but there really isn't enought evidence available that justifies all the "doom-and gloom" of global warming.

Can you say FUD?

This study sounds like Michael Crichton's Caltech on Aliens cause Global Warming.

Hey, if you can correlate any two events without providing proof and can even claim it to be valid science, the shoe-argument is fair enough.

"Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?"

what a read!
http://www.crichton-official.com/prey/index.html

as long as this technology on Mars is not self-reproducing, it sounds like a cool idea. unless they take over the planet and as Martians decide to attack Earth...

d'oh I was thinking of Michael Crichtons Eaters of The Dead

Sounds (as much as this layman can determine) quite a lot like the process used in Michael Crichton's novel Timeline.

Perfect article for this discussion. consensus

Well said.

I just finished reading a really good speech Michael Crichton gave called "Aliens Cause Global Warming". It's a very good read and discusses (among other things) how useless these models can be and how suspect their creators are.

He covers the scientific "study" of "Nuclear Winter" that was all the buzz a couple of decades ago. He mentions how Carl Sagan said the Kuwait oil fires in 1991 would cause 10 degree C drop in temperature for three months (didn't happen). Go read the link. It's good!

I'll try this again.

Since when is science a democracy / popularity contest? Science is about repeatable observations.

Anyway, everyone knows that Aliens cause global warming

Of course, who wants to be on the side of ignoring or supporting the widespread destruction of the planet by humans?

Also, your link was broken (extra trailing /).

http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches _quote04.html/

Interesting speech by Michael Crichton on whether global warming is science or politics and what the difference is. Highly recommended no matter what side you are on.

Of course, who wants to be on the side of ignoring or supporting the widespread destruction of the planet by humans? Therein likes the rub...

"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.

"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results."

"Scientific consensus" is an oxymoron (very long, but well worth reading).

"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."

Now, if you know an actual reason to be sceptical of the worldwide scientific consensus

Precisely because it's scientific consensus, and not science. See Michael Crichton's lecture on this.

I had a similiar discussion recently with some friends. I was talking about nuclear winter and how there's not only no scientific evidence to support such a scenario, it's actually highly unlikely. One of my friends responded that that was ok, it was better for people to fear nuclear winter regardless of it's scientific basis.

Yes, pollution is bad. Let's not invent a world-ending scenario though to try and make people understand that. There are plenty of reasons to significantly reduce pollution.

I think people don't understand that championing global warming only hurts the cause of the environmentalists by taking the focus away from the proven effects of pollution.

Yet Another Beowulf movie? How many is this now? 5? 6?

Indeed hopefully this one will be better than "The Thirteenth Warrior". That movie is based on a Michael Crichton book, "Eaters of the Dead", which is a rather amusing literary exercize.

The thing I find to be most telling is that Crichton puts more credible research into his novels than most global warming believers put into their understanding of the world around them.

For those who are complaining that this is a novel, here is a speech by Crichton entitled "Aliens Cause Global Warming." Read the transcript, then read the novel (including the non-fiction appendices), and then get back to us.

In summary, I am a little disappointed, not least because while researching this book, Crichton actually visited our lab and discussed some of these issues with me and a few of my colleagues. I guess we didn't do a very good job. Judging from his reading list, the rather dry prose of the IPCC reports did not match up to the some of the racier contrarian texts. Had RealClimate been up and running a few years back, maybe it would've all worked out differently...

Aliens Cause Global Warming, by Michael Crichton. It's a great explanation of why claims like this are meaningless and bad science.

The consensus on human CO2 emissions causing climate change is about as solid as you can get - despite what the oil-lobby, uninformed trolls and assorted net.kooks would have you believe.

Unfortunately, science doesn't work that way. It isn't about majority rule; it's about repeatable results that others can verify. See Aliens Cause Global Warming for an excellent analysis.

Len.

Check out this speech by Michael Crichton on the subject. www.crichton-official.com

Pathetic. This is the equivalent of stamping their feet. From misinformation to fear-mongering, the purveyors of the litany of environmental catastrophes have no shame.

Before blandly accepting another sky-is-falling study, ask Mr. Thompson if it will rain next Thursday. Ask yourself how we came to the erroneous conclusion that the earth has a meteorological "balance". Ask yourself how the IPCC was pressured to change its own conclusions. Ask yourself what place consensus has in anyone who values independent thought.

When what you believe becomes the only thing you can believe, then no prediction, no extrapolation, no leap of logic is too far, and science, the slow, rigorous process, becomes the province of the wild-eyed fanatics with exactly the same inclinations as those they disdain.

I find that the evidence for human-caused global warming is lacking, yet consensus science tends to be used to support it.

Worse yet, when someone suggests that the current global warming may be due to non-human causes, that person tends to be rediculed, attacked, or called a pawn of big industry.

Yet we don't know the natural global warming trends of the earth. We don't know how much sunlight earth received in the past, and how much it is receiving now. We don't know what the average amount of natural CO2 released is. We don't understand fluctuations in atmospheric composition. We can't even predict the weather a month down the road. In short, we don't understand what humans are doing to the environment, and how much is being effected.

Yet human caused global warming is popular because it can be used to support reform to protect the environment.

I'm all for less pollution, less waste, more recycling, and more efficiency, but lets be honest: We don't need to promote an unproven idea in order to support environmental reforms.

Just my $.02

If you're interested in emergent behaviour and like sci-fi thrillers, you must read Michael Crichton's Prey.

I know a lot of people here seems to despise Crichton but, IMHO, he writes book that are really fun (and much better than the movies they span).. so I encourage everyone to give them a try.

btw, if you like Prey you should read Andromeda Strain , also...

--krahd

mod me up, Scottie!

If you're interested in emergent behaviour and like sci-fi thrillers, you must read Michael Crichton's Prey.

I know a lot of people here seems to despise Crichton but, IMHO, he writes book that are really fun (and much better than the movies they span).. so I encourage everyone to give them a try.

btw, if you like Prey you should read Andromeda Strain , also...

--krahd

mod me up, Scottie!

This is a classic case of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. You read a news story about your field of expertise and you notice that the story is completely innacurate, and then you read news stories in fields you don't know much about and assume that they are accurate.

The public knows when Kerry is bullshitting about the Red-Sox and other sports ("Lambert Field") because we know more about sports than Kerry. Slashdot knows when Kerry is bullshitting about technology (his support for the clipper chip, etc...) because we know more about technology than Kerry. The MSM is good at detecting when Kerry contradicts his own past statements (flip-flopping) because the MSM is proficient with Lexis-Nexis and other search tools. We don't detect when Kerry is bullshitting when he is talking about subjects that we don't know much about, like economics, military strategy, health-care, science, especially stem-cells (people will get up and walk), and everything else. You can check out any Kerry blog to see informed writers exposing all of his bullshit.

Is not the obvious liberal bias of most of the mainstream media (yeah, yeah, Fox, Rush Limbaugh, blah blah), but why they are doing such a lousy job.

If you've ever read a newspaper story where you knew the events first hand, you'll know that the papers get just about everything wrong (including directly attributed quotes). And TV news tends to be even worse; not only do they get the facts wrong, but they have to compress the whole story down to about 30 seconds (unless it involves baby pandas).

Part of this is bias, but only part. Equally significant is the reporting of speculation as fact; the treatment of editorials as reportage; and the lamentable trend to just not care about the details.

These days I work on the assumption that any news report will have all the major facts wrong in some way.

Read Michael Crichton's speech on the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect for an insight into this problem.

Don't want to scare you even more, but did anyone read the recent NY times Op Ed piece by Bob Herbert?

Don't have a link because it is the NY Times, but here is the summary/introduction. The article was very scary, especially when you combine hanging chads, the Bush running the state, Floridia's "too close to call" status, and all of its electoral votes.

Voting While Black

By BOB HERBERT (NYT) Op-Ed
August 20, 2004, Friday
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 23 , Column 6

The smell of voter suppression coming out of Florida is getting stronger. It turns out that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, in which state troopers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando in a bizarre hunt for evidence of election fraud, is being conducted...

Yes. I read it. You'll want to read this too:

What Bob Herbert Didnt Tell you

And
Herbert's Dishonest Jihad Continues

After that, you could find the following meme-killing article on the Florida elections interesting:

Florida Forever

If you're wondering, I tend to collect links that counter the prevailing winds in the media. Also I tend to distrust something I read in the NY Times unless I can find corroboration from trustworthy sources.

This speech by Michael Crichton is good reading too:

Why Speculate?

Have fun.