[extropy-chat] More good stuff from Michael Crichton

[Max More]

Aliens Cause Global Warming

A lecture by Michael Crichton
Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html


>When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic 
>require quotation marks around it?
>
>To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming 
>controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in 
>the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to 
>a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer 
>model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in 
>themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data 
>from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were 
>themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. 
>There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only 
>model runs.
>
>This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. 
>Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if 
>you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the 
>complex point where the global warming debate now stands.
>
>Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked 
>to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make 
>financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their 
>minds?



_______________________________________________________
Max More, Ph.D.
max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org
http://www.maxmore.com
Strategic Philosopher
Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org <more at extropy.org>
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