Michael Crichton - Aliens Cause Global Warming

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech- .html

This article is posted in the speeches section of Michael Crichton's official web page. (It is long but worth reading.) This article starts by pointing out that flawed science with enough believers can show "scientific findings" his examples are SETI and the Nuclear Winter theories. Both of these theories were given legitimacy because they had a formula for calculation. The problem was that none of the inputs to the calculation could in fact be calculated, only estimated; with no evidence. His next example is that the EPA said that second hand smoke kills 3,000 non-smoking Americans a year. This information was from 11 of its own research groups who assigned it a risk factor below half of what the EPA is even supposed to acknowledge as harmful, but with a change of its regulations, this new "fact" was created. But these statistics were enough to make policy changes and have this skewed statistic become common knowledge. Five years later the American Cancer Society was claiming that 53,000 people a year died from second hand smoke, with no evidence to back it. But who wants to defend second hand smoke?

Finally Crichton gets to the topic of global warming. He first recognizes that almost all data on global warming is generated by computer models. He then points out that there is no way that we can judge what the world will be like in 100 years, because we don't have the tools, concepts, or lifestyles that they will have. his example is that people in 1900 worried about all the horse pollution in New York City. This is obviously not a problem in the 2000's even with a much larger population. After pointing out that there is no way we can predict what the world will be like in 100 years when global warming would be a bigger issue, he notices that policy now has its dirty hands in the mix. now that everyone knows about global warming it exists, even though it may not be a fact.

His conclusion is that in order to have science purified, there needs to be an independent science research facility that is funded by a pool of government, business, and philanthropy. The research would also be separated at every step so no one could sway the data too much. Only when no one's opinion or money gets factored in is science pure.

The things in this article that I thought were not stated by interesting were that he never mentioned any of his credentials of speaking on behalf of the illegitimacy of science. He also didn't mix in any ideas from his book into this speech except for funding has a big impact on science and that we know nothing about global warming but yet we are forming policy around what we speculate. This is a convincing argument if the main idea is to acknowledge that we know very little.