Aliens cause global warming, says Crichton

[tracer]

Aliens Cause Glolbal Warming is the title of an essay/lecture given last January by Michael Crichton (of Jurassic Park fame). It begins thusly:

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.

The full text is archived at http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/GW-Aliens-Crichton.html. (It's stored on the SEPP site because its conclusions happen to jive with SEPP's stance on global warming; I don't know if Crichton himself supports SEPP or not.)

The gist of the article is that, while SETI's whole foundation is more wishful thinking than actual science, it's perceived as being scientific by the public at large, to the point that even most scientists now hold a "consensus belief" that SETI has a decent chance of success -- and, this, SETI programs continue to be funded to this day. Similarly, Crichton argues, nuclear winter, second-hand smoke dangers, and man-made global warming have little or no real scientific evidence to support them either -- but a "consensus belief" in their reality, even among scientists, has taken hold.

I note that a couple of examples Chrichton gives of "the consensus being wrong" are themselves questionable. Margarine, for example, may not be the answer to our nation's cholesterol problems that we once thought it was, but trans fat isn't the genocidal demon it's made out to be either. Similarly, although hormone replacement therapy which includes both estrogen and artificial progesterone did turn out to carry with it an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and breast cancer, the original researchers were correct in their assertion that h.r.t. reduced the risk of osteoporosis (and no conclusive results are yet available for h.r.t. without artificial progesterone).

So, with the understanding that Michael Crichton is more novelist than scientist: Does what he's saying about global warming have merit? Are the vast majority of scientists who agree that global warming is happening due to human activity, and that we're headed for disaster if we don't cut our CO₂ and methane production way back, just a meaningless "consensus" whose supporting data are weak and conflicting and whose motive may be clouded by a desire to change public policy?

[kwildcat]

Quick and dirty response, just noticed this thread:

My wife is a Ph.D. and biomedical researcher for the US EPA. The following statements are virtually undisputed by the scientific community, in the same way that the statement "matter is composed of a wide variety of particles" is undisputed (meaning we may not know what all the particles are, but we damn sure know they're there):

1) Climate change is variable and cyclic throughout Earth's history. Generally it is measured in intervals of geologic time (i.e. tens of thousands of years if not longer)

2) The fossil record (most notably ice cores from the either pole) gives conclusive, but not precise, measures of a variety of atmospheric components. In this way several of the periodic dinosaur extinctions have been pinpointed because of high levels of radioactive or volcanic materials during certain time periods.

3) These geologic fluctuations can be (and have been) charted and used to create models for our environment and the changes it can and has been through.

4) The last 200 to 1000 years (the period of greatest growth in the human species and the Industrial Age) correspond with the most drastic changes in atmospheric composition across the shortest time interval in the history of history. These changes do not fit any of the models of "natural" fluctuation based on hundreds of thousands of years of data.

5) It is not reasonable to chalk #4 up to coincidence. It IS reasonable to assert that, while not fully understood, there is a high probability the explosion in human and industrial activity and the unbalancing of environmental models are connected.

['possum stalker]

Crichton's slightly skewed view of science is reflected by his apparent belief that Carl Sagan interviews and Scientific American magazine are the forefront of scientific thought. He has some good points, but IMO he is waxing nostalgic about some Golden Age of Scientific Purity that never existed.

Politics and religion have influenced science since before Socrates got his hemlock milkshake. Outsiders with an aggressively different view always have a rough time- when you declare someone's intellectual career worthless and best forgotten, they disagree loudly. Lomborg, for example, is a statistician who claims several fields of study are producing false and misguided results. Is it any wonder his findings are disputed? It's not as though Lomborg has been silenced; his book was widely hailed by popular media, and given a great deal of comment is scientific circles also. It takes a very long time for disputes to be settled academically, and it always has. If Lomburg is right he will be hailed as a genius after his death, like the other belatedly honored scientific prophets Crichton mentions.

[Age Quod Agis]

Sorry, kwildcat, but you should have read the article. Your response plays directly into the article's argument.

kwildcat:
The following statements are virtually undisputed by the scientific community

That's his point. Science by consensus is the problem he's arguing against. The statements should be disputed, but aren't.

kwildcat:
Climate change is variable and cyclic throughout Earth's history.

How do we know it's variable? How do we know it's cyclic? Isn't there some evidence that it's chaotic? Chrichton seem to think there is some evidence that weather systems are chaotic (but we don't know for sure).

kwildcat:
The fossil record (most notably ice cores from the either pole) gives conclusive, but not precise, measures of a variety of atmospheric components.

I admit that I'm confused on how samples can provide "conclusive, but not precise" measurements. I suppose I could see a sample conclusively demonstrating that, for example, the atmosphere must have contained some helium because this sample contains helium. But you couldn't be precise about the time that the sample came from, and you couldn't rule out the presence of any particular type of particle merely because it wasn't in the sample, and you couldn't accurately measure the relative amounts of gasses because of our small sample size and the small area from which we're drawing a sample. Am I wrong?

kwildcat:
In this way several of the periodic dinosaur extinctions have been pinpointed because of high levels of radioactive or volcanic materials during certain time periods.

I assume by "periodic dinosaur extinctions" you mean "number of extinctions of multiple life forms." But doesn't your statement imply that we know when the organisms became extinct? Can we really do better than estimate in round numbers of millions of years? And can we really be more precise than to say that we are unaware of any fossils that date back after a certain period?

And Doesn't it imply that we know what killed the dinosaurs? I thought that we guessed it was a meteor, but other theories included ]plate tectonics, and even an "ill wind" (flatulence . . . seriously)

kwildcat:
The last 200 to 1000 years (the period of greatest growth in the human species and the Industrial Age) correspond with the most drastic changes in atmospheric composition across the shortest time interval in the history of history.

So many questions:

1) If climate change is measured in intervals of geologic time, which are "tens of thousands of years, if not longer," then how do we know what the greatest change in 200 to 1000 years is? Have we reliably measured the atmosphere composition in intervals of 200 to 1000 years during the entire history of history? During any period in history?

2) Are you saying that the event that killed the dinosaurs or trilobita involved less atmospheric change than the last 200 to 1000 years?

3) Industrialization has only taken place in the last 100 years. If the change in atmospheric composition has taken place over 200 to 1000 years, then why do we assume the change in atmospheric conditions was caused by industrialization?

kwildcat:
It is not reasonable to chalk #4 up to coincidence.

Why not?

kwildcat:
It IS reasonable to assert that, while not fully understood, there is a high probability the explosion in human and industrial activity and the unbalancing of environmental models are connected.

Why?

As a scientist, your wife is doubtless familiar with the phrase, "correlation is not causation." The mere fact that the atmospheric composition has changed at the same time that human population has increased, part of which included industrialization, does not mean that humans and industrialization caused the climate change.

And why do you characterize the changes in the atmospheric composition as an "unbalancing of environmental models"? I don't understand why they must necessarily be unbalanced.

I'm undecided on global warming, but I thought the article was very interesting. I look forward to you folks edifying me on these topics. Thanks for the post, tracer.

[jshore]

Originally posted by tracer
So, with the understanding that Michael Crichton is more novelist than scientist: Does what he's saying about global warming have merit? Are the vast majority of scientists who agree that global warming is happening due to human activity, and that we're headed for disaster if we don't cut our CO₂ and methane production way back, just a meaningless "consensus" whose supporting data are weak and conflicting and whose motive may be clouded by a desire to change public policy?

Bah...I think Crichton is mainly out-to-lunch. For one thing, the belief in the potential seriousness of anthropogenic global warming is now so widespread in the climate science community that you really have to be a paranoid conservative who believes nearly everyone is a closet socialist in order to ascribe it to just a motive of people who want to change public policy. While it does seem true that many if not most of the naysayers have connections to right-wing libertarian groups or the coal industry, I have never seen any evidence that the converse is true for the vast majority of scientists who support the "consensus view".

Other criticisms:

(1) I fail to see how his own example of nuclear winter proves that much. He shows neither that a broad consensus was achieved in the scientific community (in fact quoting scientists who admit they might want to believe it for political reasons but find the science to be poor...which tends to undermine his claim), nor that it's science was ever effectively repudiated. (I'm not saying it wasn't...I am just honestly not up on it. I do think at least some of it was shown to be incorrect.)

(2) The claim that the Drake Equation is untestable is itself unproven. Yes, we may not be able to test it now, and that does limit the conclusions we can draw from it at the moment, but that doesn't make it useless or not science. Surely, some of the terms can now be estimated reasonably accurately. And, the existence of this equation might encourage others to come up with better ways to estimate others in the future. We've made considerable progress on determining the existence of planets around other stars, for example.

(3) While it is true that science does not really work by consensus, it is sometimes necessary when science is needed to make public policy decisions to get an idea where the state of the peer-reviewed science is at the moment. That is what IPCC, NAS, etc. attempt to do. Is this a perfect process? No. But, I think it is still a useful one and framing it as an evil of "consensus science" tends to hide the fact that you or I would likely come to the same conclusion about the current state of the peer-reviewed science if we had the time and ability to read all that is published in the relevant journals. (I myself do try to keep in touch with the major things on climate change published in the interdisciplinary journals of Science and Nature although the subject is outside my field of training [physics].)

(4) How Lomborg was treated or not treated well in Scientific American is a debate one can presumably engage in but it is largely irrelevant to the process of science since the real science on this subject will not be hashed out in a popular book or a science journal for the masses but rather in the peer-reviewed journals.

(5) I don't understand how his proposed solution really breaks much new ground. Why is the idea of an independent institute so much superior to having what we have now, which is a lot of different institutes, universities, and organizations funding science? And, peer-review acting as a check? What sort of measures will be taken to make sure the institute remains balanced and how is this better than having organizations like the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) do meta-studies of the current state of the science on various subjects?

(6) His specific statements to the effect of believing climate models when they can't predict the weather shows a fundamental lack of understanding concerning the behavior of chaotic systems. Predicting weather and climate are two very different things (and, in fact, climate models are run with perturbations in initial conditions to deal with the chaotic issues). I'm not saying that the issue of the chaotic nature of the climate system are completely unimportant...Indeed, the idea of sudden climate change that might occur if global warming causes a radical change in ocean currents (such as a shutting down of the Gulf Stream) is an important emerging issue. And, there are real uncertainties in climate models regarding certain factors and feedback effects, hence the large amount of uncertainty (2.5-10 deg F) in the IPCC's prediction for temperature rises in this century. But mixing the issues of weather and climate is really just muddying the waters. It is also worth noting that the "consensus view" tends to acknowledge uncertainty to a greater extent than the naysayers. For example, it is not the consensus view but naysayer Patrick Michaels who is so willing to tell us definitively how much warming will occur this century (about 2.5 deg, the low end of the IPCC estimate) and where it will occur (almost exclusively in cold dry places).

[jshore]

Originally posted by Age Quod Agis
Chrichton seem to think there is some evidence that weather systems are chaotic (but we don't know for sure).

Actually, we do know for sure. When the NWS runs their forecast models out to forecast the 6-10 and 8-14 day periods, they run "ensembles" where they perturb the initial conditions a little bit. They do indeed find that sometimes the weather predictions change dramatically due to these perturbations, showing the underlying equations in the models (which may not be exactly reality...but are pretty close) are chaotic. Sometimes the ensemble predictions all cluster around the same general solution and sometimes they are all over the place, and this fact allows them to not only make a forecast but to give an estimate of the confidence they have in that forecast. It's actually kind of cool, IMHO.

But, as I noted, this is of only some relevance to the discussion of climate prediction. And, it also points out that scientists have ways of testing these issues.

[jshore]

Age Quod Agis: I don't have the time or energy to research and answer all your questions in detail but I strongly urge you to consider the fact that just because you don't know the answer to them does not mean that they are not well-studied and well-understood. I suggest that you look at the IPCC website or the NAS report for starters. There are also several other previous threads on climate change:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...hreadid=104877
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...hreadid=134552
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...hreadid=136373
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...hreadid=183320
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...hreadid=202274
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...hreadid=222143


Just to cite one example, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, especially on the timescale of the last 150 years, is very well understood and there is no real debate on this, even amongst those scientists who are contrarian on climate change. (And, indeed most of the change in CO2 levels has occurred over the last 100 years. There are reasons why these and other levels could have been changing due to humans even before that...since even prior to industrialization, there were significant land use changes and the like...and there was a recent paper I believe suggesting that this may be somewhat more of a factor than previously recognized. But that is very new.)

[jshore]

Oh, if you want to read more haranguing about environmentalism from Chrichton, wherein he informs us that DDT was never harmful to birds, implies that environmentalists are the ones to be blamed for our 50-year policy of forest fire suppression, ..., click here.

So, to answer your question tracer, I think there is little doubt that Chricton and SEPP / S. Fred Singer get along famously. In fact, as near as I can tell, Chricton is likely getting a lot of his ideas from straight from Fred. I'd be shocked to find out they aren't quite buddy-buddy.

[Age Quod Agis]

Thanks for the research, jshore. I'll take a look at the links you've provided.

[jshore]

No problem, Age Quod Agis. I'm like a moth-drawn-to-a-flame on these global warming threads!

[jshore]

Having now read the entire Crichton speech that I linked to, I think I can state that the "Aliens Cause Global Warming" lecture is freakin' brilliant by comparison! He not only creates a strawman, he creates a whole straw-society! I'll give him one thing though, he is an entertaining speaker/writer.

[tracer]

He does have a point, however, about people being a little too willing to believe in an Idyllic Lost Paradise in the distant past. (Margaret Meade's book on the Samoans is one example -- Meade believed two local girls' made-up stories about sexual freedom uncritically, because she wanted to believe that native people "untainted" by civilization led wonderful sex lives.)

[Paladud]

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but that dinosaur flatulence link is just great. Unless it's not really a joke, anyway.

[jshore]

tracer: But it is a small point about a few people (or, alternately a very exaggerated picture of a phenomenon that might apply to a few more people). Worse yet, he then uses it to basically jump in and say that it was wrong to ban DDT, there isn't very good evidence for global warming, and to imply that environmentalists are to blame for the policy of fire suppression. (More often, environmentalists are blamed by the Right for a "fires are natural...let it burn" point-of-view, which is itself an oversimplification of what they really support, but at least blaming them for this would have the virture of being more in line with his general thesis of environmentalists over-glorifying nature and natural processes.) He never shows a definitive connection between his characterization of environmentalism and the actual policies he blasts, and particularly the implication that these policies are based on this religious fervor rather than on science...And, his claim that the EPA is hopelessly politicized and should be abolished and replaced. (I think there is a good argument to be made that the EPA is getting badly politicized under the Bush Administration, where the civil service scientists are being overruled by the White House and its political appointees. But, alas, I am afraid, given his views on environmental issues, that this is not the sort of politicization that he is worrying about. It sounds like he is pretty much supporting it with his views on climate change and such.)

[beniyyar]

Mr. Crichton successfully and ironically uses the example of horse manure in 1900's New York City to pillory the abuse of hard science to promote a liberal political agenda. His to my mind rather clever use of this example has apparently been lost on many of the correspondents to this forum. Mr. Crichton was trying to show that much of the environmentalist movement in the scientific realm is nothing more or less than horse manure and should be treated as such.

[Dr. Rieux]

When in fact it is the Right's abuse of hard science to promote their raping the Earth agende which is a prime example of horse manure.

[beniyyar]

Oh please. I am sure that you can do better than this!

[jshore]

beniyyar: We know what he was trying to do. That doesn't mean that he was successful at it. In particular, things hinge the interpretation of your statement "that much of the environmentalist movement in the scientific realm is nothing more or less than horse manure and should be treated as such." If this is applied to some fringe ideas, then I might agree with it to an extent (although I would stay say it's exaggerated)...Just as much of, say, the power and coal industry contributions to the scientific realm is poor science.

However, Chrichton is using it to attack ideas that have strong support of the mainstream scientific community...like the science of climate change (as well as the effects of DDT on birds and other things).

And, I have no idea why you were so dismissive of Dr. Rieux's reply that used charged language but no moreso than you did. There have been editorials written in Science magazine about this Administration's poor use of science to advance their agenda, including their agenda to weaken environmental laws and continue to do nothing about climate change. There is also an excellent book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, "Trust Us, We're Experts," documenting the industry public relations campaigns to sell their agenda in this realm. It is a vital resource for understanding the background of the groups who are denying the potential seriousness of climate change and people like Steven Milloy (who runs junkscience.com) who are doing industry's bidding on a wide variety of issues. At least most environmental groups have pretty transparent names that tell you who they are and what their biases might be. I think few people wouldn't know that Greenpeace, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council, etc. have an environmentalist perspective. It's a lot harder to know about groups with names like "National Center for Policy Analysis," "National Center for Public Policy Research," "junkscience.com", "Global Climate Coalition," "Greening Earth Society," ... all of which are pretty much industry-front groups or at least groups with a strong libertarian / anti-regulatory ideology.

[beniyyar]

I try as much as I can to stay away from what appear to be conspiracy theories, or worse, imputing to political or social movements rather darkly suspicious or even criminal motives for their policies. As you mention, some of the fringe, or even not so marginal aspects of the environmental movement have as the BBC so eloquently put it regarding British government policies in Iraq, sexed up their charges. Many times this is done to increase governmental or private funding for their activities, sometime it is done in innocence, sometimes it is done in ignorance, but whatever the motive, each charge must and should be evaluated on it's own merits, and just because some highly respected environmental group advocates something doesn't make it valid. What Mr. Crichton said was simply that in the case of environmentalism, as in religion, sometimes the so called true believers, that is, the fanatics, so dominate the movement that even when they speak the truth, they must be suspect, both in terms of their facts and their motives. I expect this from the so called soft sciences like sociology or psychology since most if not all of what they represent can neither be duplicated or verified. I once read that a radical feminist charged that all men are rapists, how truly clever and radical, and how just plain foolish! If hard science can and has been twisted like this, then frankly, what can any rational person believe?

[jshore]

Originally posted by beniyyar
If hard science can and has been twisted like this, then frankly, what can any rational person believe?

Well, it is exactly because of this danger that we have organizations such as the IPCC and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to evaluate the current state of the science. And, at least on the issue of climate change, I think their conclusions suggest that more of the twisting has come from the side of those denying the seriousness of the issue than from the environmentalist side. This is, of course, why the deniers now are making arguments about the dangers of "consensus science" and the difficulty of overturning established paradigms (which I heard Patrick Michaels lamenting) and such in order to discredit the main body of peer-reviewed scientific work in favor of a small body of occasionally-peer-reviewed work that reaches different conclusions.

[jshore]

And, by the way, religious-like fanaticism is in no way to the realm of environmentalism. I enjoy poking fun at what I call "market fundamentalists" who have a similar sort of fanatical religious belief about the market system. Adherents to this philosophy hold similarly quasi-religious notions that cause them to claim, for example, that the market will solve problems whose costs are not even accounted for in the market at the moment.

[jshore]

By the way, I came across a nice letter from 1996 in The Scientist that was written by one Patrick Hassett at Ohio University. It was written in response to an opinion piece by S. Fred Singer (who I mentioned in a post above and runs SEPP, from which the OP obtained the reprint of the Chricton speech. In that piece, Singer blasted the Swedish Academy of Sciences for awarding the 1995 nobel prize in chemistry to the researchers who discovered the CFC - ozone chemistry that causes stratospheric ozone depletion (or what Singer calls the "stratospheric ozone depletion hypothesis").

Hassett's letter, which I think provides a nice summary of the political landscape and explains this attack on environmental science by a few self-annointed skeptics, is here. You need to register...which is free...to access it. I will quote a good part of the letter below but I strongly suggest that you go read the whole thing since I had a hard time deciding what parts to leave out in the quote here (in order not to infringe on any copyright by quoting the whole thing or nearly the whole thing):

The recent Opinion essay by S. Fred Singer on the awarding of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for research on chlorofluorocarbon-ozone chemistry [The Scientist, March 4, 1996, page 9] is a continuation of a well-orchestrated political campaign, using a small group of self-appointed "skeptics," that is aimed at undermining research into environmental problems. The implication that it is the Nobel Prize committee that is politicizing the basic science issues of CFC-ozone chemistry is disingenuous at best. Time and again the mode of attack is to assert that the basic science being conducted is contaminated by the political ends desired. The CFC-ozone and climate change research programs are the current favored targets of these "skeptics"...

The debate is not being waged in the scientific literature or at scientific meetings, but in the mass media through "sound-bite science," and in front of accommodating congressional committees, with funding provided by corporate interests that see themselves threatened by the research. Scientists actually doing the research on ozone depletion or climate change are portrayed as proceeding with blinders, ignoring even the most obvious problems with assumptions or data, in their single-minded zeal to arrive at a preordained conclusion.

...

The defense might be that these "skeptics" are simply balancing the views of other scientists that are publicized by environmental activist organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund or Sierra Club, but if so these "skeptics" should make clear their perspective, and their connections with and financial and logistical support from such organizations as the Western Fuels Association, the American Petroleum Institute, OPEC, and the Heritage Foundation. It may be inevitable that when basic research intersects with public-policy issues, the research itself will become a political target, but if that is the case, then the politics should not be hidden behind a veil of scientific "balance."

Although written in 1996, phrases like "in front of accomodating congressional committees" are still particularly timely today, given the hearings on climate change held just this past summer by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works under the chairmanship of arch-anti-environmentalist James Inhofe! (Here is a link to the PDF of an article that originally appeared in the New York Times and discusses this event. Here is a piece with more details on the industry and organizational affiliations of the people involved.)

[Black Train Song]

Maybe the cactus Michael Crichton had a conversation with told him aliens caused global warming. He talks about the conversation he had with the cactus in his book "Travels".
I do admit that it was an enjoyable book though.

[Oblivion]

It is great to see jshore has not given up on trying convince this forum that the current increases in Earth's temperatures are being caused by humans.

The fact is no one knows.

The NAS thinks it might be humans.

The IPCC models say it is so, but strangely the models don't match reality. And even ten years later, the models aren't even close to matching reality.

Jshore is wrong, and just because he has a lot of documentation does not make him right.

There really is a very large group of credible scientists that do not agree with the IPCC. There really is a lot of credible theories, like it is the sun's cycles, that make a hell of a lot more sense that CO2 forced warming, and can explain temperature variations prior to man even being on Earth.

Earth's climate is, as of now, a very large mystery. The human contribution to Earth's climate is something, but what that something is is so far from being known that it is absolutely ridiculous to be making changes to human behavior based on the junk science the IPCC is putting out.

If anyone here really wants to find out what is going on then they should research the 'precautionary principle' and how it is being applied by people like jshore and the IPCC to control your lives.

Oh yeah, isn't Crighton a Medical Doctor? Don't you have to take just a wee bit of science to become a Medical Doctor? Atleast enough to learn basic scientific principles, like Hypothosis, Test, Data, Analyse and Conclusion.

The IPCC has a great Hypothosis, but they skipped straight to the Conclusion. Everything in between is junk science.

[Avumede]

Wow, Oblivion. There is so many logical fallicies in what you just posted it's hard to know where to start. So I'm not going to. Please try and post again with a coherent argument - perhaps by giving your proof that the IPCC report is incorrect.

[jshore]

Originally posted by Oblivion
It is great to see jshore has not given up on trying convince this forum that the current increases in Earth's temperatures are being caused by humans.

I am glad that I have not disappointed you, Oblivion.

Originally posted by Oblivion
The fact is no one knows.

Well, noone knows anything about the world that has to be derived inductively with complete certainty. However, the evidence that the rise in global temperatures over the last ~40 years (which turns out to be most of the net rise in the 20th century) is due primarily to humans continues to accumulate.

And the probability that our emissions of greenhouse gases will cause warming in the next century is considered virtually a certainty by the IPCC and by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in this statement that they just adopted which reads in part:

Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate. These effects add to natural influences that have been present over Earth's history. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.

...

It is virtually certain that increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will cause global surface climate to be warmer.

Here is what the American Meteorological Society has to say. These are both professional organizations of their respective disciplines which try to keep their statements focussed on the science and shy away from taking political statements.

Originally posted by Oblivion
The NAS thinks it might be humans.

Actually, it is considerably stronger than "might". Here is a quote from the NAS report:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air
temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are
expected to continue through the 21st century. Secondary effects are suggested by computer model simulations and basic physical reasoning. These include increases in rainfall rates and increased susceptibility of semi-arid regions to
drought. The impacts of these changes will be critically dependent on the magnitude of the warming and the rate with which it occurs.

It is worth noting that the group of scientists that produces this NAS report included Richard Lindzen, probably the most scientifically-respected of the naysayers on global warming, and he presumably fought tooth-and-nail to get as many doubtful words as possible put into the report.

Originally posted by Oblivion
The IPCC models say it is so, but strangely the models don't match reality. And even ten years later, the models aren't even close to matching reality.

If you download the SPM (summary for policymakers) of Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis from the IPCC website, you will see in Figure 4 that this is not the case. The models can now do quite a good job of reproducing most of the general features of the temperature record between 1860 and 2000. However, to do so, the models must incorporate best-guess estimates of both the natural and anthropogenic climate forcings. Incorporating natural forcings only does a poor job, particularly over the last ~20 years. Incorporating only anthropogenic forcings fails to account for some of the features seen prior to ~1970.

There really is a very large group of credible scientists that do not agree with the IPCC. There really is a lot of credible theories, like it is the sun's cycles, that make a hell of a lot more sense that CO2 forced warming, and can explain temperature variations prior to man even being on Earth.

Well, there is no doubt that there is climate variability due to natural factors. That is sort of obvious since there have been ice ages and times when the earth was very warm in the distant past. However, I have yet to see a theory not invoking anthropogenic factors in any peer-reviewed work (maybe anywhere) that does a good job with the past data including the dramatic upkick in the last ~40 years.

The group of scientists in disagreement is not large...and is particularly not large in terms of their body of published work in the peer-reviewed literature. They do make a lot of noise in the popular press and on the web because they have some pretty good backing from some right-wing/libertarian think-tanks and those in the fossil fuel industry that are still backing this point of view (e.g., not BP and Shell anymore...BP supports Kyoto and has already implemented Kyoto-like cutbacks in their own emissions, completing them several years ahead of schedule and at a claimed net savings due to reductions in energy costs.)

Earth's climate is, as of now, a very large mystery. The human contribution to Earth's climate is something, but what that something is is so far from being known that it is absolutely ridiculous to be making changes to human behavior based on the junk science the IPCC is putting out.

IPCC is not so much "putting out" science of its own as much as summarizing the state of the science as it exists in the peer-reviewed literature. Thus, condemning the IPCC is pretty much condemning the entire peer-reviewed scientific community or, alternatively, making the claim that the IPCC process has been hijacked. A few have tried to make the latter claim but it hasn't stuck. (In particular, the NAS report essentially re-affirmed the IPCC findings. Also, nearly every article I've seen published on climate change in Science and Nature includes a reference to the IPCC report in the context of presenting the current state of thought on climate change.)

The point of the IPCC and others is that, while there are still many remaining uncertainties in terms of magnitudes and severity, the dangers are very real and the window to mitigate the effects is closing ever more with time. The longer we wait, the more draconian and expensive will likely have to be the response.

Oh yeah, isn't Crighton a Medical Doctor? Don't you have to take just a wee bit of science to become a Medical Doctor? Atleast enough to learn basic scientific principles, like Hypothosis, Test, Data, Analyse and Conclusion.

That does not make him infallible. Science is never unanimous. One can find PhD biologists and physicists and what-not who are young-earth creationists. (I think one of the "creation science" websites has a convenient listing of them.)

The IPCC has a great Hypothosis, but they skipped straight to the Conclusion. Everything in between is junk science.

Well, let's see who it is who are the perveyors of (or at least have been duped by) this junk science:

(1) the IPCC.
(2) NAS (National Academy of Sciences).
(3) AGU (American Geophysical Union).
(4) AMS (American Meteorological Society).
(5) The editor-in-chief of Science magazine, noting the peer-reviewed literature that has appeared in his own journal.
(6) The editors of Nature.
(7) British Petroleum (which is something like the 7th or 11th largest corporation in the world).

I'm sure people could add to that list...In particular, I am sure there are plenty of professional societies in other countries besides the U.S. who I have sort of short-changed here. Wow, it's a pretty vast conspiracy to foist junk science upon us!

On the other side, we have (listing the ones I happen to know, biased toward the U.S.):

(1) Richard Lindzen, a respectable scientist but reportedly also a consultant for Western Fuels Association (i.e., coal industry).
(2) Patrick Michaels, a Senior Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and also a receiver of funding from Western Fuels.
(3) S. Fred Singer, who heads his own outfit called "Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)" which in addition to railing against the scientific consensus on global warming, also rails against the one on stratospheric ozone depletions, and the ones on other environmental issues.
(4) Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, Senior Scientists at the conservative, industry-founded George C. Marshall Institute. (And, also big-time associations with Tech Central Station, a libertarian site on the web which may or may not be related to the Marshall Institute...I don't know.)
(5) Robert Balling (who I haven't heard much of lately): Can't recall what his affiliations are and leave it as an exercise to the reader.

['possum stalker]

I guess all we know about global climate change is that jshore is wrong. Thanks for that update, oblivion.

If you have anything other than windy denunciations to contribute, start now.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Avumede
Wow, Oblivion. There is so many logical fallicies in what you just posted it's hard to know where to start.

They way I see it, the whole thing is just a big tangled mess of fallicies and soundbites.

[beniyyar]

Dear Rooves, I also read the Crichton book "Travels", and as you point out, it does tend to vitiate some of Mr. Crichton's credibility. It does not however, discount the logic and facts he presents in his speech regarding demographics, meteorology, and environmentalism. These sciences are useful, and have some predictive and thus decision making value. However, they can and have been abused by both well meaning and unscrupulous individuals to provoke dangerous, unnecessary, and expensive government policies, at least some of which have proven to be counterproductive even to the goals of those promoting them. To my mind, demographics is perhaps the worst of what I call the "voodoo sciences," that is sciences which can be used by practically anyone to prove and predict practically anything. Demographics has been and is still being abused to produce failed but expensive government policies dealing with poverty, income disparities, medical care, education, unemployment, and welfare. And these failed policies aren't confined to the United States, but have spread to Europe and the Far East where increasing numbers of healthy and productive people are being impoverished to finance these programs.

[jshore]

By the way, I should note something as a point of clarification: I do not believe that the IPCC itself officially endorses any specific policy solutions. Its job is to weigh the science (with science used in the broad sense to include economics and such). So, they will point out the various costs and benefits of different actions and such but they do not specifically propose any action. That is done through the UN FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change), which uses the IPCC reports as input to formulate and implement policy solutions and that is what Kyoto has grown out of.

Another point of clarification: In calling Lindzen "a respectable scientist", I meant that he has (as far as I know) a decent publication record in peer-reviewed journals on issues related to climate change. The others I listed may also be "respectable" scientists but are ones who, as best I understand it, have a very limited publication record in peer-reviewed journals on issues related to climate change. I.e., they are people who are engaging in arguments in regards to climate change mainly in the popular press, by putting out their own materials, or occasionally by publishing letters to the editor of magazines like Science (since usually such letters are subject to less-stringent standards of peer-review for the purposes of allowing a dialogue), or more occasionally by getting a full-fledged article published in some peer-reviewed journal (as Soon and Baliunas did...although, as the NY Times article I linked to discusses, the publisher and editor-in-chief both admit it shouldn't have been published and the latter has resigned in protest over the journal's reviewing procedures).

[picunurse]

Oh yeah, isn't Crighton a Medical Doctor? Don't you have to take just a wee bit of science to become a Medical Doctor? Atleast enough to learn basic scientific principles, like Hypothosis, Test, Data, Analyse and Conclusion.

He was, 20 or so years ago, an ophthalmologist.
In an interview several years ago he talked about his battle with bi-polar disorder. He didn't take meds, because it interfered with his creativity. Sorry, No cite. It was probably 10 years ago. I'm old, I don't remember.

[jshore]

Originally posted by jshore
Here is what the American Meteorological Society has to say.

I do have a habit of linking to things before I have completely read them myself. Having now read this entire statement, I feel compelled to put in a stronger plug for it. I think it is a particularly nice summary of what is known and what gaps still need to be filled in climate change research.

I'll restrict myself to quoting just one paragraph here, discussing the motivation for setting up the IPCC and the dangers of listening too much to one small subset of the scientific community:

Informed policy decisions of government and industry demand unbiased assessments of scientific results by the scientific community. The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement among scientists. Individual scientific statements and papers-the validity of some of which has yet to be assessed adequately-can be exploited in the policy debate and can leave the impression that the scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in reality, a strong scientific consensus. The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) to fulfill the critical role of providing objective scientific, technical, and economic assessments of the current state of knowledge about various aspects of climate change. IPCC assessment reports are prepared at approximately five-year intervals by a large international group of experts who represent the broad range of expertise and perspectives relevant to the issues. The reports strive to reflect a consensus evaluation of the results of the full body of peer-reviewed research. A large number of U.S. scientists are on the international Working Groups of the IPCC that prepare and review these reports. They provide an analysis of what is known and not known, the degree of consensus, and some indication of the degree of confidence that can be placed on the various statements and conclusions. These reports have become the prime scientific basis for international political decisions about climate change.

[The bolding in the above statement is mine.]

[cuauhtemoc]

What would be the reason for inventing the human-made global warming hypothesis and using it to influence policy?

Is there an international cabal of windmill manufacturers just itching to cash in on widespread fear of global warming?

Are universities paying scientists big money to crank out dire predictions about how our gases are hurting the planet? Even if they are (which they're not), I can't imagine they're paying more than the industries are paying greenhouse skeptics.

beniyyar says he tries to stay away from conspiracy theories. So do I. I have a hard time imagining entire communities of scientists getting together and deciding to propagate misinformation and fear with no benefit to themselves or anyone else.

[Black Train Song]

Ben ,

To be honest with you this debate is out of my league so I'm not even going to try to argue the issues.

I just found it a little weird that he can accept certian fringe ideas like communication with a cactus and the ability to detect auras etc while chiming in on sciences that are just begining to be accepted.

I uderstand blaming politics but not science. If there's only one earth, it would seem to me to air on the side of caution no matter what we're looking at.

-my less than two cents

[jshore]

By the way, in regards to Crichton's examples in the original OP's linked-to speech of cases where the scientific "consensus" was stubbornly wrong and refused to change its view for a long time, I had a suspicion that at least some of these examples might be a bit simplistic. As it so happens, I ran across this article tonight that discusses the Wegener continental drift example that Crichton summarizes thusly:

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 geology-until 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.

As the article I linked to makes clear, the reality of what happened is a bit more complicated than this. For one thing, Wegener's views were hardly "sneered at". Rather, "hard rock geologists opposed it and theoretical geophysicists supported it". Furthermore, some of Wegener's arguments for his view were erroneous and it took a long time before more compelling evidence emerged. Also, some of the critics agreed that the "jigsaw puzzle" argument did suggest the continents may have been one at an earlier time but were unconvinced that this implied the continents were still drifting today as opposed to having done so in the past when the earth was in a hotter, more molten state. Furthermore, the final theory of continental drift was considerably modified from what Wegener had originally proposed.

The point of all this is not to argue that the "consensus" of scientists can never be stubbornly wrong but rather that some of the purported historical examples of such failure may not be as clear-cut as people tend to believe now. My own personal guess is that for every scientist who has a correct theory that represents a "paradigm shift" from the consensus view, there are probably on the order of 100 scientists who think they have a viewpoint or theory that would represent such a paradigm shift but are simply wrong. (More precisely, my guess would be that the larger the issue and scale of the paradigm shift involved, the worse are the odds that it is correct.) So, that in most cases, these scientists are being marginalized by the scientific community for good reason...i.e., they are really not presenting compelling enough evidence or arguments to carry the day. (In my own personal experience, my PhD thesis did this "arguing against the consensus" on a much much lower, less earth-shattering, level...I.e., my advisor and I came into a small subfield of physics that we hadn't worked in and made a claim that went against what seemed to be more-or-less the general consensus in that small subfield. We were definitely greeted with a certain amount of skepticism but we didn't have any real difficulties getting our theory published and, as near as I can tell, more or less accepted.)

[beauregard]

Crichton's speech is not about the merits of the global warming debate, but about a concern that a strain of political correctness is infecting the scientific community.

Just as being on the wrong side of the affirmative action debate may be hazardous to an academic's career at many universities, being on the wrong side of the global warming debate (or second-hand smoke, or nuclear winter) may be professionally dangerous for a scientist (whatever the evidence).

Surely this could have a chilling effect on science, and set the stage for pernicious public policy (such as the smoking bans in NYC and elsewhere).

It seems to me an important point, and one he argues compellingly.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by beniyyar
It does not however, discount the logic and facts he presents in his speech regarding demographics, meteorology, and environmentalism.

Am I the only one who noted that counterarguments to Crichton's speech are being ignored in favour of reiterating rhetorics?

[II Gyan II]

Originally posted by beauregard

Just as being on the wrong side of the affirmative action debate may be hazardous to an academic's career at many universities, being on the wrong side of the global warming debate (or second-hand smoke, or nuclear winter) may be professionally dangerous for a scientist (whatever the evidence).

That's how I see it. There's this link doing the rounds of group blogs today. Tangentially related.

[jshore]

Originally posted by beauregard
It seems to me an important point, and one he argues compellingly.

And, the evidence he provides to back up this claim is what exactly? To me, it sounds very much like the claim of "creation scientists" and others who have a view of things that cannot stand up to the evidence well enough to get published in the peer-reviewed literature so instead they take their argument out into the general public.

By the way, I can tell you that being on what you call "the wrong side" of the debate in the case of global warming certainly doesn't seem to hurt you in the sense of making you unable to find monetary support for your research. Rumor has it that Western Fuels was paying its consulting scientists on a per-hour rate that most scientists would only dream of! (And, Richard Lindzen, a naysayer on global warming who was said to be the recipient of some of this money, was nonetheless chosen by NAS to be one of the members of the group that issued their report on climate change.)

So, yes, I understand that there are certain "fads" or "paradigms" in science and that it may sometimes by easier to get your papers published if you agree rather than disagree with those who are most likely to be refereeing your papers. But, Crichton is trying to claim much more than that in that he is arguing:

(1) That this leads to the actual suppression for a reasonable length of time of a lot of good science that really has good support and evidence. [And, particularly, that it is still likely to happen in a case when care is being taken to have an open and inclusive process of reviewing the peer-reviewed literature to give a summary of the current state of the science to policymakers and others.] Scientists are supposed to keep an open mind to other evidence and, while they are admittedly imperfect human beings, I think they will usually be willing to accept science into the literature that goes against their biases. I, for one, when serving as a referee recently recommended to a physics journal that they publish a paper whose main point was to show that something that I and a colleague had conjectured in a paper (concerning the generality of a feature we found in one particular model) does not in fact appear to be true. And, this was true even though I did not find their evidence to be completely convincing...I basically said in the review that the evidence was sufficiently strong that I thought it met the criteria for being published. I hope (and believe) that I am far from unique in this regard.

(2) He is arguing that it goes in one direction toward what you call "political correctness," by which you seem to mean by your examples only one sort of political correctness. He is also ignoring all the factors going in the other direction, e.g., the availability of lots of money through industry and conservative / libertarian think-tanks to support and amplify the other point of view to the point where as the AMS statement says it can leave "the impression that the scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in reality, a strong scientific consensus."

[jshore]

By the way, I should add that although I don't consider myself to be very well-informed on the science of secondhand smoke, Crichton's summary of the issue is...to put it politely...only one side of the story. Here is an SDMB thread that got into this issue a fair bit. [As one example, note that I in my 11-25-2003 4:37EST post on the 3rd page of that thread linked to a cite, admittedly with its own biases, that provided additional background on the judge's ruling in regards to the EPA, including the fact that it had been vacated on appeal.]

[beauregard]

To jshore et al:

Cricton's evidence for the threat of "political correctness" is evident in the speech, if you've read it. He may not have named it "political correctness" because that label in itself sets off all kinds of crazy alarm bells in all directions these days.

The use of "political correctness" in my statement meant: policy stances that are popular among a powerful liberal establishment, and which are particularly guarded by an attack team at the ready.

I personally (if you are at all interested in my personal views) remain on the side of environmentalism -- that is, when in doubt, err on the side of environmental conservation.

However, I don't embrace the idea that we should promote dogma over debate (or dissent) to promote environmentalism.

In short: science ought not be influenced by what's popular. And I think that's Crichton's point.

[Kimstu]

beau: However, I don't embrace the idea that we should promote dogma over debate (or dissent) to promote environmentalism.

In short: science ought not be influenced by what's popular. And I think that's Crichton's point.

I really doubt that you'll find many serious scientists suggesting that we should promote dogma over debate, for any reason whatsoever. However, I think it's uselessly idealistic to suggest that science can or should remain totally uninfluenced by the pressure of consensus or majority opinion in scientific communities.

Scientific research tends to proceed by "paradigms": that is, the most plausible-looking model for some currently unexplained or ill-explained natural phenomenon becomes the "bandwagon" that many researchers jump on. It's not really possible to do cutting-edge scientific research without provisionally adopting a theory that's not yet fully confirmed by evidence. (After all, if it were fully confirmed, it wouldn't be cutting-edge anymore.) And people inevitably tend to be influenced by majority or consensus views in their fields. So it doesn't seem possible that science can ever totally avoid being somewhat "influenced by what's popular".

And that means that sometimes, inevitably, the consensus or majority view is going to be wrong: the model that seems to most researchers most plausible is sometimes going to be a bad choice. You can't avoid it; there is no magic formula for always picking the right model first crack out of the box.

That doesn't automatically imply that dissenting or skeptical views will be drowned out or that alternative theories will be suppressed. If that's what "climate skeptics" are really worried about, their best strategy would be to treat the proponents of the consensus view with respect, while producing non-polemical, high-quality, peer-reviewed research that supports their opposing view.

The more they resort to polemical rhetoric that accuses consensus scientists of being dishonest eco-activists, or mindless PC sheep, the more the scientific community in general will mistrust their arguments. After all, those who complain the loudest that the scientific community is an elite cabal that squelches unorthodox brilliant discoveries are usually not the originators of unorthodox brilliant discoveries. They're usually just cranks, or people with an axe to grind.

[jshore]

First, let me say that I have nothing to add to kimstu's nice summary in regards to dogma and all that.

Originally posted by beauregard
Cricton's evidence for the threat of "political correctness" is evident in the speech, if you've read it. He may not have named it "political correctness" because that label in itself sets off all kinds of crazy alarm bells in all directions these days.

The use of "political correctness" in my statement meant: policy stances that are popular among a powerful liberal establishment, and which are particularly guarded by an attack team at the ready.

I just don't find Crichton's "evidence" of this problem to be very compelling. Take, for example, the case of nuclear winter. Let's for the moment even accept Chrichton's full account of the events (which, as I have pointed out, is probably not completely wise given his track record on other examples, but I am in a generous mood). What exactly went wrong here in the scientific community? I can't even figure out what his complaint is? I would have thought it would have been that other scientists dogmatically tried to defend the science of this for political reasons even though it was wrong. Yet, he did not quote one scientist who did this. The best he can do is quote a couple of scientists who said things like what Freeman Dyson said or Victor Weisskopf said...which is expressing some sympathy for the idea that nuclear war is a very bad thing and who wants to say otherwise, but saying that the science here is "terrible" or "atrocious". He also notes how the editor of Nature criticized its claims.

In fact, the entire freakin' argument that this is a piece of "consensus science" rests on one quote from one of the authors of the paper claiming that it represented a consensus.

So, what do we learn from this? Assuming we can trust Crichton's summary of events, I think we learn that one should be distrustful if a few individual scientists tell you that their paper represents the consensus view. And, I would definitely agree with him on this. [In fact, I have an amusing personal anecdote in that regard: When I was looking for postdocs, I decided to see if any consensus was emerging in regards to a theoretical understanding of high temperature ("high Tc") superconductors. So when I went for a job interview at Argonne National Labs, I asked them there and they told me that indeed there was a consensus emerging and they proceeded to explain how it was now obvious that the basic mechanism for normal (low Tc) superconductors applied to these new high Tc superconductors. I then went out to UCLA and asked the same question. I was again told that indeed there was a consensus emerging since it was now obvious that the basic mechanism for low Tc superconductors could not possibly apply and that more exotic electron-electron interactions were responsible. When I got back home, I told friends that there was seemed to be unanimous agreement that a consensus was emerging in the theory of high Tc superconductivity. The only problem was that noone could agree on what the consensus actually was!]

However, the nuclear winter example does not tell us that we should be distrustful if the National Academy of Sciences, the IPCC (a process designed to involve a whole lot of scientists and review the entire peer-reviewed literature), the AMS, the AGU, the editors of Science and Nature all tell us there is a scientific consensus on some matter. In fact, if anything it gives us more confidence that scientists will still criticize the science of a work even when they are sympathetic with the political or psychological viewpoints that underlie it.

Basically, I find that all of Crichton's writings on this subject are a sort of bait-and-switch routine like this. He presents one example of something and then uses it to claim something else which his example is in fact woefully inadequate of demonstrating.