*sigh* DDT again

[mmcirvin]

Tim Lambert spots yet another resurgence of the "environmentalists killed millions by banning DDT" hokum.

I don't think he should necessarily pick on Ron Bailey's late-2004 review of "State of Fear", given that Bailey seems to left Michael Crichton's global-warming-denialist camp since then; I suspect Bailey wouldn't write the review quite like that today. But it's worth mentioning that Crichton's been pushing the DDT story too, and Senator James Inhofe still thinks he's a scientific authority.



An aside: I sometimes cringe at people pejoratively describing Crichton as a science-fiction author. Given his recent output, especially, it seems like an insult to science fiction. On the other hand, I don't want to turn into one of those people who defines SF to exclude everything I don't like. On the other other hand, in terms of marketing and technique Crichton definitely falls comfortably into the techno-thriller category, which is really distinct from the core SF genre and which has different traditions about how you handle rubber science. It's particularly irritating that he so often writes author's afterwords and such that attempt to convince the audience that his bogus science is of urgent real-world importance, and that they so often believe it.

Comments

[jwgh]

If they wanted a real science fiction auther they should have gone to James P. Hogan!

[astrange.livejournal.com]

Judging by "Fallen Angels", they could have gone to Larry Niven as well. The backstory of that book involves the Green Party winning an election, banning all "inappropriate technology" and causing a new ice age in their attempts to stop global warming. I have to wonder if it and Lucifer's Hammer are just well-executed trolls.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Wasn't "Fallen Angels" one of those Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Some Other Guy Who Actually Wrote The Book collaborations?

[astrange.livejournal.com]

It's possible, but the way the book was made entirely to namedrop people who go to sci-fi cons seems like a Niven thing to do.

[sultmhoor.livejournal.com]

Ugh, he was my favorite author until he started that ID shit, then he just became unbearable. I couldn't even finish the sequel to Cradle of Saturn.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Actually, I remember Inherit the Stars being written in a very thrillerish style as well, though the content was not thriller stuff at all but was basically about a scientific investigation with nothing at stake other than figuring out the mystery. I remember thinking it was a refreshingly unusual match of style and subject matter, and I kind of liked it even though the truth about humanity's origins that emerged seriously stretched suspension of disbelief.

Judging just from that blurb, Hogan seems to have spun way, way out into crackpot land.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...I mean... it sounds suspiciously like he's just taken the prevailing crackpot position on evolution and AIDS and relativity and climate and cosmology! That's an incredible parlay.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and he's a Velikovskian too!

[jwgh]

Yeah. I remember that in one of his books the hero was a physicist working on an anti-relativity theory. That was a bit of a warning sign. (As I recall the alternative theory in question was derived from an alternative interpretation of the Michelson-Morley experiment -- which as you have said is not by any means the only evidence for relativity.)

[jwgh]

Hogan's views on relativity apparently are based on those of Petr Beckmann, incidentally.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Jesus H. Criminy on a pogo stick, what a fruitenlooper. Duesberg and Beckmann in the same paragraph!

The insistence that CFCs have nothing to do with the ozone hole (the most popular argument for which comes from the Lyndon LaRouche organization) has long been one of my most useful ignoramus indicators, and he triggers that one too.

He ends with a classic paean to the engineers, who are smarter than all those crazy scientists with their highfalutin theories, that could have been lifted straight out of 50% of the crank manifestoes on sci.physics around 1995. You see that attitude a lot. Many of the most articulate physics cranks (as opposed to the incoherent madmen) are either software or electrical engineers; they have learned enough math and physics to construct arguments that can sound convincing to laymen, and will often actually gain followers as a consequence. They often see relativity as a personal affront because it imposes the speed-of-light limit, and to them imposing limits is not what science is supposed to do; science is the handmaiden of technological progress, and science that doesn't help them do what they want to do is either useless or wrong.

I'm familiar with the danger of theoretical overreach, which is real (and which on alternating days I think may be operating in some parts of modern physics); but Hogan's attacking targets that have been richly confirmed by decades of experiment and observation.