Lovelock : “the sceptics are right to be deeply distrustful of scientists who are overly reliant on computer models”

“What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: ‘Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?’ If you don’t have that continuously, you really are up the creek.

“The good sceptics have done a good service – but some of the mad ones, I think, have not done anyone any favours. Some, of course, are corrupted and employed by oil companies and things like that. Some even work for governments. For example, I wouldn’t put it past the Russians to be behind some of the disinformation to help further their energy interests. But you need sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic.”

And the sceptics are right, he says, to be deeply distrustful of scientists who are overly reliant on computer models, particularly when it comes to predicting future climate scenarios: “We’re not that bright an animal. We stumble along very nicely and it’s amazing what we do do sometimes, but we tend to be too hubristic to notice the limitations. If you make a model, after a while you get suckered into it. You begin to forget that it’s a model and think of it as the real world.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock

About Tony Heller

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4 Responses to Lovelock : “the sceptics are right to be deeply distrustful of scientists who are overly reliant on computer models”

  1. TimC says:

    I see you had to go back to last March to catch the Grauniad printing anything like that!

  2. Now that should bring a tear to your eye! but but! Lovelock said “do do” and I quote “We stumble along very nicely and it’s amazing what we do do sometimes”
    (Inside joke of a cocky arrogant fucker)

    Even when they where caught out, That fucken lieing asshole got his blows in, Lashing out all the way down at the same people he screwed over. what the hell is a rhetorical admission of guilt good for?.

  3. ArndB says:

    More than twenty years ago, The INDEPENDENT (23 Sept. 1989, by Tom Wilkie) titled a news report „Environment expert launches attack on ‚corrupt scientists’“ on a speech by James Lovelock, writing that, last night, he had launched an outspoken attack:
    ___ “on “corrupt scientists” who play on public fears about pollution for their on personal advantage”
    ___”Science had grown fat, lazy and corrupt”,
    ___“and like an obese atherosclerotic, man imagines that more rich food will cure his conditions”

    It seems he was more explicit when saying that “science has grown fat, lazy and corrupt” and that the situation has been getting much worst over the last two decades.

  4. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    Sometimes Lovelock makes sense. Other times he seems to have loose screws.

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