
What he said (6)
September 1, 2015I recently finished Michael Crichton’s novel State of Fear. It’s a little dated now, since it came out in late 2004, but I still found it an entertaining read. And that’s despite the fact that it’s not one of his better novels; it ain’t a patch on The Andromeda Strain, for example.
I won’t give anything away but it’s a story about how people perceive climate change and anthropogenic global warming.
At the end, Crichton wrote some end notes to explain his personal take on AGW. Among those were these comments that I liked.
I believe people are well intentioned. But I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.
The hard-headed common sense of these remarks reminds me of things that Thomas Sowell has said.
Leave a Reply