Friday, June 2, 2017

Aliens Cause Global Warming by Michael Crichton


A few days ago, I guest-posted another lecture, from sci-fi legend Robert Heinlein.
Events yesterday make this guest post, from the late great author, screenwriter, and film director Michael Crichton, one that needs to be shared. I've linked to it dozens of times, in posts and comments online, and its truth and applicability never goes away.

It's on a dozen internet sites already, though all rights to this devolve to the author's estate and any other legal holders of same. I reprint it in its entirety here for educational purposes; as homage to a singularly great and gifted mind, too soon departed from our midst; as further insurance against it being removed elsewhere; and for its perspicacity and aptness just now.

The great pity is that it's not on audio, DVD, BD, or even YouTube: word to his estate, I'd buy 20 copies tomorrow if it was, to give away to friends.

Please read it all, and enjoy it with my warmest benediction and compliments.


Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003
by Michael Crichton
Charting this progression of belief will be my task today. Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do.
Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science - namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy.

It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values-international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind.

I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought---prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lure of politics and publicity.

Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free. But let's look at how it came to pass.

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL


Again, there is no evidence either way.
Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astrophysicists and astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject," and it remains so to the present day. But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either with bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal? It's kind of fun. If people want to look, let them. Only a curmudgeon would speak harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother.
And of course, it is true that untestable theories may have heuristic value. Of course, extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it is - pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings.
The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example - meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks.
Now let's jump ahead a decade to the 1970s, and Nuclear Winter. In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on "Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations" but the report estimated the effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor.
In 1979, the Office of Technology Assessment issued a report on "The Effects of Nuclear War" and stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible adverse consequences on the environment. However, because the scientific processes involved were poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate the probable magnitude of such damage.
Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a report entitled "The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon," which attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer.

The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS report, which attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate.
Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe etc
(The amount of tropospheric dust = # warheads x size warheads x warhead detonation height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x Particles entering the Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle endurance, and so on.)
Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but concluded they were catastrophic. According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months.
The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between 0.5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age.
This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold. The real nature of the conference is indicated by these artists' renderings of the effect of nuclear winter.
I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a tranquil scene in the north woods. A beaver has just completed its dam, two black bears forage for food, a swallow-tailed butterfly flutters in the foreground, a loon swims quietly by, and a kingfisher searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if ever there was.
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. There's no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus.
In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.
There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory.
The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.
And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy. The list of consensus errors goes on and on.
Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says that the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. it would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be found in the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about," other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science but who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is terrible but---perhaps the psychology is good."
The nuclear winter team followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the editors denying that these statements were ever made, though the scientists since then have subsequently confirmed their views. At the time, there was a concerted desire on the part of lots of people to avoid nuclear war. If nuclear winter looked awful, why investigate too closely? Who wanted to disagree? Only people like Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb."
Yet for most people, the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant. I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible.
In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.)
This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.
In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information."
The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science; there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings a whole host of health problems."
Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.
As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions.
And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed.

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established.
Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks - suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases.
In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done. When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?

As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs. This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well.
Richard Feynman called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands. Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future?
Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses? But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport.
Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago.
In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure. But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter.
The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes."
The answer to all these questions is no. We don't. In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to second-hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides.
The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepreneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations that all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science.
Well, I'll tell you.
In recent years, much has been said about the post-modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas may anger scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. 
The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." (But of course, the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.)
The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes."
It was a poor display, featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocaust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist."
Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to? When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail.
Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down. Further attacks since, have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter.
That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic. Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I'd just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of Mother Church. 
The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-- science and the nation will suffer."
Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.

                                                      --- # ---
 For a taste of what it would have sounded like live, a speech of his that is on YouTube:


Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing. That's a good read.


LFMayor said...

We used to put the insane who had no family support means onto County Farms. Why in the hell we started letting them teach our kids....
Somewhere along the way our culture got tired, too tired to walk the mids and 4 to eights?

Anonymous said...

I'm reminded that after Einstein published his Theory of Relativity the Nazis published a rebuttal of the "Jewish science". It was called "100 Scientists Against Einstein" or something like that. Albert quipped "Why did they need 100? If I'd been wrong one would have been enough."

Mark D

loren said...

Sadly we'll do a rinse and repeat in 20 years when CO2 warming has been proven to be trivial and some other crisis has taken over the chattering classes. Reminding them of previous BS won't help as this one for sure is the real deal. Everybody says so.

Unknown said...

yes... but it will be simply remixed with some new hysteria that will demand action!,.. demand it!,.. and yes, the US must pay! I was in UN relations for the State Dept in the early 80's. Long before AWG. In fact it was the days of "The Big Chill". The 197 countries didn't latch on that as the lever to drive the "New World Economic Order",.. international Tax system or diminution of property rights for transfer -- they just voted 197 to 5 in the UN Assembly and went away sobbing no one would send them their international Welfare checks. Socialism was the vogue of the day,.. along with anti-nukes, anti-capitalism/industry,.. ... Paris agmt is practically the same with a International Slush fund, Taxation of the "north" for the "south",.. nothing has changed except for the meme of 'we have to do this to save the World.. and thereby save ourselves'.. The Grand Crusade.

JC said...

I very rarely comment. However I thank you for posting this... I found it fascinating. One of the best things I've read in a long time.

Elaine said...

Great article! Catching up on my reading here. Also enjoyed 'Dear Annapolis', 'Pathosociology' and all of the other articles. Keep them coming.

I did see a couple of comments about the gray and black being hard to read and also your response. The white and black not too bad, but wouldn't mind if it was different, might make it even easier to read.

Thanks again for good articles!

A Texan said...

This was, quite simply, one of the very best articles you've ever published. It takes apart the entire facade of popular "science" (and no dis against the magazine of similar name - it often has some interesting and useful articles of its own...along with some incredibly stupid tripe based on the latest popular fad in the world of political "science").

Of course, the money quote was, "Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."

Money, and power over other humans, is the main motivation behind trivializing and bastardizing REAL science. Real science gave us automobiles, antibiotics, computers, a few trips to the Moon, TV, the Internet (no thanks to Al "Sore Loserman" Gore), nuclear power, desalinization plants, jet travel around the world, etc., etc., etc. All that fake science ever gave us was another way to bludgeon dissenting voices that speak the truth, and yet another way for government and its hangers-on to steal yet more of the hard-earned wages of average people. It is the very worst combination of totalitarianism and the Mafia mentality.

I wonder when the public will wake up. Please note that I'm not holding my breath. Frankly, the better question to ask is: "WILL the public wake up before I drop dead in 30 or so years?"

Aesop said...

I totally agree, which is why I printed the text of Crichton's address here.
It should be on YouTube in video form in perpetuity. He gave, with these words, the best defense of science as science, and the most damning critique of "consensus" sciencism as nothing but undisguised rent-seeking, political advocacy, and religious hokum I've ever seen delivered. It should be required reading for high school and freshman college students, especially anyone majoring in any branch of science.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, human nature does not change. It is almost guaranteed that it will happen again, next time with lessons learned from the latest failure.

MMinLamesa said...

Thanks for that-most excellent