thanks for your comments. like you, i like Gore, Crichton, and Rose. i respect their intelligence and opinions. obviously, Crichton is the odd-man out on this issue. but i agree with Crichton’s premise that from the scientific perspective, consensus is irrelevant. there are other scientists and thinkers without political agenda (hopefully) that make the same case as that of Crichton, one example is Freeman Dyson. see Dyson’s take on Global Warming.

that said, i suggest that you also watch Charlie Rose interview with Al Gore and compare it with the Crichton interview and decide for yourself who you believe more.

you said: “so when you say you hope he turns out to be right, i’m not completely sure what you mean.”

i was generalizing. but what i meant was, i’d rather Crichton be right than the doomsday scenario painted by environmental alarmists (e.g. the cassandras). for example, on the extreme there’s James Lovelock who’s saying that we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. so imho, although Crichton is a skeptic, i think Crichton takes the more optimistic view on this issue.

i hope that clarifies my point. thanks for riffing with me on this topic.

~C

i’d like to expand on my previous comment in the hope that you would like to know why i feel as i do.

i. too, honestly like al gore. i like charlie rose even more, so it’s painful to see that they don’t get what crichton is warning us about. crichton admits, of course, in this interview, that he doesn’t understand that well himself what might be happening, both with regard to climate and human concern about it. so when you say you hope he turns out to be right, i’m not completely sure what you mean.

if you’re referring to his prediction, i personally feel it was a mistake on his part to actually come out with a number. he himself has emphasized that future climate cannot be predicted. the point i guess he was making is that the numbers for global warming we’re now repeatedly hearing are, we can safely PREDICT, exaggerated, based as they are, at least in part, on the imaginations of the catastrophists. we may not be able to predict future climate, but we can confidently predict the unreliability of their predictions on the basis of their previous track record. catastrophes do happen, but they are very rarely, if ever, foreseen by any sort of consensual process. typically, after a catastrophe, someone claims that he or she warned about it, but no one would listen. i think crichton may very well be a case in point. he is warning us, in effect, that in our increasing obsession with global warming, we are failing to keep a lookout for more probable and more potentially devastating catastrophes.

he gave some hints of why this is so, and i imagine that now that he has joined the i-i board and is in communication with ken wilber, he is developing a more integral vision of this postmodern phenomenon.

as to president bush, it’s important to keep in mind the distinctions crichton makes between politics and science, and between consensual science and real science. bush and crichton both disagree with the consensual science on global warming, but for different reasons. bush’s are political, crichton’s are scientific. needless to say, bush’s recent endorsement of global warming is purely political.

we already have an example of the downside of the catastrophist position now sweeping the globe. the rush to use biofuels is evidently contributing to the dramatic rise in the cost of basic foods, with consequences that dwarf those of actual global warming.