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A comment on Michael Crichton: Aliens Cause Global Warming.

Re:Michael Crichton: Aliens Cause Global Warming by nazgulnarsil on Thursday November 06, 2008 @05:56AM (#355559)
this is really depressing. are all of you asleep at the wheel? this essay is NOT ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING. global warming is only the latest in a long line of scientific studies that have become corrupted due to the influence of politics. The details of the current case are not important. Whether or not anthropogenic global warming is true is not important. What is important is the way scientists are behaving. If scientists are reduced to squabbling children as soon as there is some blood in the water what hope does the rest of humanity have?

This essay is one of genuine concern over the direction of humanity. And as the best hope we have for a rational future, concern over the direction of science.

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Re:Michael Crichton: Aliens Cause Global Warming by olavk on Thursday November 06, 2008 @10:53AM (#355785)
He does take sides in the debate though, by framing Lomborg vs. Scientific American as Galileo vs. The Church. Since we know Galileo was right, the reader is of course supposed to assume that Lomborg will also turn out to be right in the face of blind dogma. Therefore Crichton doesn't have to address the actual criticism towards Lomborg.

However if Lomborgs book is indeed bad science, then the strong rebuttal from scientfic circles is fair.

By the whole framing of the issue Crichton imples that it is SA and the "consensus" which is politicized. However Lomborg is himself a political figure (advisor for the right-wing Danish goverment in environmental matters). That does not make him wrong, but it implies we have to look at the actual content of the rebuttal to determine who has the better case.

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