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“Where Powerful Interests Bemoan Modernity”

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I don’t know how I missed this TCS parody from The Poorman. We owe Andrew Northrup a debt of gratitude.

I stumbled onto this link via Ted Barlow, who is having some fun with Michael Crichton’s descent into wingnuttery:

There are fair criticisms to be made of the environmentalist movement, but international terrorism? Weather control? A shadowy conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of environmentalists, Hollywood, climatologists, the media, and trial lawyers… who’s prepared to swallow this? And have they ever tried to organize a friggin’ surprise party?

Indeed. And since Crichton is reviving a bit of propaganda just as the powerful interests that promoted it so heavily in the 90’s are finally admitting the gig is up, let’s take another look at one of the great unanswered questions of the grand global warming conspiracy, wherein virtually every credentialed climate scientist is in on the scam to bring industrial civilation to it’s knees. The question is simple: Why? Perhaps they just hate modernity? No, that would be projecting. Crichton has another answer:

In “State of Fear,” it is money-hungry environmentalists….

Ah, the state of the art in underpants gnome logic.
Stage one: Make up a bunch of stuff about how fossil fuels, the lifeblood of the global economy, are doing serious damage to the future inhabitability of the world.

Stage two: ????

Stage three: PROFIT!

The serious attempt at an answer for this is that you have to adhere to the scientific-environmental orthodoxies to be eligable for grant money, and grant money is more plentiful for climate change studies. The response to this lies in a simple thought experiment. Imagine you’re a climate scientist in 1995. You’ve got a good Ph.D and and you’re in good professional standing. Setting aside the scientific merits of the two paths, you’ve got a choice: accept, in broad terms, the scientific consensus of your peers, and write grant proposals that operate within that framework. Or, deny the validity of the framework and suggest all sorts of nefarious motives for its very existence.

If you choose path one, and you write good proposals, you stand a decent chance of making a comfortable living doing scientific research. If you’re lucky and good enough to make a significant breakthrough, you might do a little better than that and become a minor celebrity in small circles.

No, the true path to wealth lies with the second path. You’ll lose the respect of your peers, but you’ll have a whole new set of friends with deep pockets. They’ve got connections at think-tanks, where you can write and write without bothering with concerns about professional standards. You’ll get to be on TV all the time! (“In the interests of balance, we’ve included on this panel of distinguished experts a drooling partisan hack.”) Y’know how much exposure Ward Connerly gets? That could be you!

I’ve never been particularly tempted to read one of Crichton’s books or see one of his movies, but now I’ve got all the more reason to avoid them.

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