Aliens cause Global Warming

[Ed Lizard]

http://brinnonprospe.../crichton2.html

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. 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. I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack.

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. The world might not be a very good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.

But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. 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 lures 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.

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion. One way to chart the cooling of enthusiasm is to review popular works on the subject. In 1964, at the height of SETI enthusiasm, Walter Sullivan of the NY Times wrote an exciting book about life in the universe entitled WE ARE NOT ALONE. By 1995, when Paul Davis wrote a book on the same subject, he titled it ARE WE ALONE? ( Since 1981, there have in fact been four books titled ARE WE ALONE.) More recently we have seen the rise of the so-called "Rare Earth" theory which suggests that we may, in fact, be all alone. 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.

...

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 .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. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute. But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a wellorchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later.

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.

At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these findings now?

Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists."

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. 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 is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

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.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

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. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. 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.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geologyuntil 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

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 therap6y�the list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

But back to our main subject.

What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media campaign that had to be planned weeks or months in advance.

...

To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now largescale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. 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 Feynmann 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? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the model makers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd.

Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in 2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be a scam?

Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horsesh*t? 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. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, Prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, Teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS. None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about. Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.

(Read it all)

[superjames1992]

Charlie Sheen thinks this is a win!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115571/

Confronting Phil at the JPL, Zane is able to get them alone outside and threatens him into confessing that the aliens are planning to kill off the human race during the next 10 years by using accelerated global warming. Once the human race has been annihilated, the aliens will then take over Earth for their own habitat. Zane pulls out a remote control for a video camera he hid in a bush to capture Phil’s confession.

[Ed Lizard]

Charlie Sheen thinks this is a win!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115571/

I assume tl;dr?

[superjames1992]

I assume tl;dr?

It was a movie made back in 1996 in which aliens created global warming to kill off the human race. Your thread just reminded me of it.

[Clifford]

http://brinnonprospe.../crichton2.html

Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite ...

Good Point.

In the time of the TITANIC, the people had thought they had conquered the world. Only to find out that Mother Nature had other plans.

Eventually scientists often do come to a consensus.

Most scientists consider water as consisting molecules formed from two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. However... science doesn't end there, and the atomic and molecular structure including electron clouds is still being studied.

Reading the A-L-E-X portion of this website...

Apparently an optical light microscope has been developed that goes beyond the theoretical limits of light microscopy.

The Age of Earth, and the Age of the Universe routinely get revised.

I must admit that some of the National Geographic Future films are intriguing... but often seem more like science fiction than science fact.

[Mencken_Fan]

Outstanding essay by a writer I respect; thank you.

1.) I remember well the discussions we had in grade school on the coincidental borders of Africa and South America. To a child, it was indeed patently obvious - but it wasn't until my junior high days that plate tectonics were taught.

2.) I never bought that "nuclear winter" crap. Serving in NORAD during the 1970s I was reasonably familiar with the quantity of nukes and with the results of nuclear detonation. My first thought was: "hogwash!" Earth is a big planet, and the effect of a nuclear detonation is awfully small when put on such a scale. Furthermore, the nuclear arsenal was targeted for a relatively small area of the planet - with multiple deliveries to individual targets.

3.) "Second-hand smoke." Oh lordy! I never bought that either. If second-hand smoke was "all that"; us first-hand smokers (who endlessly flood our lungs with poisons) would be dropping like flies. We're dropping yes, but not like flies.

4.) Belief of life on other planets is a "religion"? Perhaps, but I don't see it that way. I look at the world (universe) through probabilistic eyes; and though I cannot state there is life on other planets, I'm comfortable saying it's highly likely. To me, religion is not belief in the improvable, but the belief in the improbable. For example, consider the odds of; 1) in defiance of all physical laws a dead person comes back to life; and 2) a handful of Jews lied to further their cause. Neither is provable but one is certainly more probable than the other! This is the process I use to define my personal reality.

5.) Climate change.....oh my.....never in all my years have I found anything so baffling. May we discuss it for a few more years please?

Thanks again for your post.

[mempho]

4.) Belief of life on other planets is a "religion"? Perhaps, but I don't see it that way. I look at the world (universe) through probabilistic eyes; and though I cannot state there is life on other planets, I'm comfortable saying it's highly likely. To me, religion is not belief in the improvable, but the belief in the improbable. For example, consider the odds of; 1) in defiance of all physical laws a dead person comes back to life; and 2) a handful of Jews lied to further their cause. Neither is provable but one is certainly more probable than the other! This is the process I use to define my personal reality.

Well....yes and no. Even Sagan himself stated in his book The Demon-Haunted World that it was apparent that cases of "alien abduction" were very much the same as cases of demonic possession in the days of yore.

Now, we know which side of the issue Sagan was on, but, generally, serious belief in extraterrestrials is technically atheism but not even close to the type of atheism that's thought of in popular culture.

On the other hand, the Christian literature by professional theologians on the subject of extraterrestrials has concluded that aliens are not really extraterristrials at all, but they are the other side of Sagan's coin...demons posing as beings from other planets.

Which brings us, strangely enough, to global warming. You see, at the heart of the global warming movement is something like this..."global warming is a global problem that requires a global solution." Hence, global solutions require an architecture for their administration, and, since people fear the term "world government", it would be global governance.

Now, if we come back to religion (and you can pick any of the major religions here), but you find in all of the world religions this move towards a unified world. In Chrisitianity, Islam, and Judaism, this end is a very bad thing...a malevolent world government that is controlled by Satan through the Anti-Christ (also known as the Daijal in Islam) for a period of time of great suffering on Earth (Tribulation) just prior to the return of Jesus (Christianity) or the Mahdi (Islam...the Mahdi also returns with Jesus at his side).

In any case, some people believe that aliens are gods and were the source of the various (but very similar) mythologies and religions of the ancient world. Or, perhaps, the stories in those ancient texts aren't so fanciful after all and the greatest deception of all is being laid as we speak.

In a world where there are no concrete facts and nothing can be proven without trusting someone or something, the choice will be made on an individual basis and, ultimately, that choice will be whatever that person wishes to believe.

You might be comfortable looking at things probabalistically, but, if you are, I'd suggest to you to consider the probability that everything you know would not be even 0.01% of the information you need to make even the most basic assessment. After all, the ancients thought the world was flat and suggesting otherwise would make you the subject of scorn and ridicule....but the earth does look flat, doesn't it? So, be careful about making probabalistic assessments based on only what you can see. It's not what you see, it's what you don't see that will do you in.

[beneficii]

Hi mempho, this is a good post, and I thought that it covered the perceptions of people well. I just wanted to make one comment on one part of it:

In a world where there are no concrete facts and nothing can be proven without trusting someone or something, the choice will be made on an individual basis and, ultimately, that choice will be whatever that person wishes to believe.

You might be comfortable looking at things probabalistically, but, if you are, I'd suggest to you to consider the probability that everything you know would not be even 0.01% of the information you need to make even the most basic assessment. After all, the ancients thought the world was flat and suggesting otherwise would make you the subject of scorn and ridicule....but the earth does look flat, doesn't it? So, be careful about making probabalistic assessments based on only what you can see. It's not what you see, it's what you don't see that will do you in.

It is true that our knowledge is never certain, and everything we know is ultimately built on induction. This is the problem that science deals with. Nevertheless, the approaches taken in science, though never perfect, have been very fruitful. Chances are, for example, that we would never had this conversation without the discoveries produced by science. It's not a religion, but I do tend to take things that the scientific community says seriously, because scientists in a field would generally not reach a consensus without very good reason.

Again, it's about trust, but it's also about the fruits.

With regards to truth, science was never about finding the truth, because the truth cannot be measured. Science relies on induction, so there is always the possibility a counterexample to an explanation could be found. Nevertheless, as we produce more and more evidence in an explanation supporting it, the tendency is that it would not be overthrown--at most, parts of it would be modified without the basic idea being thrown out.

We can't measure the truth, but we can look at how much we know and go from there.

[mempho]

Hi mempho, this is a good post, and I thought that it covered the perceptions of people well. I just wanted to make one comment on one part of it:

It is true that our knowledge is never certain, and everything we know is ultimately built on induction. This is the problem that science deals with. Nevertheless, the approaches taken in science, though never perfect, have been very fruitful. Chances are, for example, that we would never had this conversation without the discoveries produced by science. It's not a religion, but I do tend to take things that the scientific community says seriously, because scientists in a field would generally not reach a consensus without very good reason.

Again, it's about trust, but it's also about the fruits.

With regards to truth, science was never about finding the truth, because the truth cannot be measured. Science relies on induction, so there is always the possibility a counterexample to an explanation could be found. Nevertheless, as we produce more and more evidence in an explanation supporting it, the tendency is that it would not be overthrown--at most, parts of it would be modified without the basic idea being thrown out.

We can't measure the truth, but we can look at how much we know and go from there.

All true, beneficii. We agree that science can be used for good or manipulated and that we should make sure that we can trust the source (which, of course, is difficult when the counters are "oil companies" or "global communists" or something like that.

In any case, all of that muckraking aside, it does underscore the point about trust.

My point is simply that as you delve deeper, everything that, at first, appeared simple is now thrown on its head. At least everyone in Galileo's time knew who the gatekeeper was...most people don't even recognize that there's a gatekeeper today...much less the identity of the gatekeeper itself.

I don't pretend to know the identity of the gatekeeper myself since the gatekeeper is a little bit like the devil...you don't know who he is but you usually have a good idea where you might stumble across him.