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"Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to determine drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in other policy areas as well."

Okay - let's build another earth on the other side of the Sun, we can carry on burning fossil fuels and they can say use solar and molten salt batteries! Michael Crichton is a well known science fiction author; you can take his disbelief in global warming with a grain of salt.

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"Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make the models from those who verify them. [...] an independent research institute [...] must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it."

Yes, we should take his opinion with a grain of salt, not because he is a science fiction author, but generally. I like to remind HN of the Royal Society's motto: Nullius in verba.

you can take any belief in a specific future with large barrels of salt, even when those beliefs are promulgated by people with whom you are in agreement.

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