Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:
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?Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they
worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably:
Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all
the horse[manure]? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it
would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for
sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy
source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and
Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900.
Remember, people in 1900 didn’t know what an atom was. They didn’t know
its structure. They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport,
or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet,
an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, . . . . [COPIOUS EXAMPLES
SNIPPED] . . . None of this would have meant anything to a person in
the year 1900. They wouldn’t know what you are talking about.Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it’s
even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the
future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s
thought knows it.
MORE TOMORROW.
Maybe I’m not the only one who has grown frustrated making these arguments. What interests me about all of this is people’s perception of evil. Industry and religion seem to hit a lot of people’s lists. The goods people perceive are nature and self. Discussing this is similar to talking about comparitive religion, the art of conversion versus argumentation is generally needed. I’m more skilled in argumentation (or at least I’m argumentitive). Jimmy seems to have a talent for conversion, which hopefully I’ll gleam over time.
There is a certain amount of “if they will not hear the prophets neither will they hear one returned from the dead” in alot of people’s mindsets, nowadays.
And the modern environmentalist mindset is religious in a sense that Crichton does not fully explicate: alot of what passes for Eco-Responsible Environmental Action, especially for “lay people”, is “expiatory” in function: recycling, buying supposedly eco-friendly products, etc. wipes out the environmentalist’s participation in humanity’s collective “eco-guilt”, and makes him “justified” in dictating to others.
Rather a perverted form of Penance, that.
“Tell me [the world of 2100) is even worth thinking about”?
A bit extreme, no?
And he also makes a fairly obvious (and given Crichton’s intelligence probably knowing) incorrect comparison between a “prediction” of “weather” and a “model” for future “climates”.
I think Crichton’s point it that the models we are capable of producing today just are not good enough to use. We will probably end up spending 100’s of billions of dollars on global warming when in fact it’s simply a natural cycle of the earth.
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