A courageous voice lost
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The passing of Michael Crichton has been a sad occasion for many of us. Not because his writing led to great movies (Jurassic Park stunk), or because ER is great television (eeww!), but because he provided an early, courageous, voice to the argument against the global warming consensus. With his passing, the WSJ pays homage with a reprint of one of Crichton’s most famous speeches. Here’s an excerpt:
Let’s be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
In the time since this speech was given, the climate reality and the theoretical climate consensus have gotten further and further apart. Since the speech was given, the number of scientists willing to come forward and question the consensus has grown exponentially. Crichton’s legacy is not his monetary success, it is his courage in the face of demand for ideological purity. For that he will be missed.
I’ve been a Chrichton fan since the 70s…I think it was about three pages into The Andromeda Strain. Then Westworld made the future both cool and dangerous.
Great writers are great writers, regardless of an “agenda” or outside-the-writing-realm activism. He asked good questions, which is an art, as well.
But his fiction – including Jurassic Park – was timeless and captivating, and I’ve used that book as an intro to Sci-Fi for several newbies. Bummer.