Aliens Cause Global Warming – Michael Crichton [pdf]
stephenschneider.stanford.edu
stephenschneider.stanford.edu
I am tempted to cut it some slack since it was written in the early 2000s, but i think the author fundamentally misunderstands the role of computer models and predictions in climate science. These models have always been treated with great scrutiny even by climate scientists, and in the present day thousands of plausible futures are considered in ensemble when thinking about the future of climate change. No, these models are not used to prove anthropogenic influence on climate. That was already accomplished without predictive models. Models are used as exploratory tools for planning and policy.
Despite the article’s issues, i did appreciate the author’s suggestions for removing bias from science:
“ Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it.”
>Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had
The majority of all human knowledge has the consensus of scientists. It is only the very bleeding edge that does not.
And equating the level of uncertainty in what kind and amount of dust particles produced by a burning city with the uncertainty in rate of abiogensis in the universe is misleading to the point of lying.
And those were only the two most ridiculous things I read in the first 5 pages before giving it up as a waste of time.
For the record, AGW Climate Change in 2024 has all that, the situation in 2002 (when this lecture in January 2003 was written) had somewhat more wiggle room.
The context for his quoted skeptiscism deserves mention; Carl Sagan's Nuclear Winter was pure pop science .. there were many reasons for most on either side of the aisles to join in in on agreement and no real upside to being a nay sayer.
Much like his quote about scientific consensus. Yes, the media often sells a lie about fake consensus that doesn't actually exist, and to whatever meager extent it is, isn't supported by much evidence, but to take that (twisted, warped, and removed from context) fact and to then simply claim that one should never trust anything which has a claimed scientific consensus is idiocy.
One should absolutely be skeptical when you get a combination of factors:
1) The _only_ arguments are appeals to consensus 2) The topic has strong political valence
but those are very specific circumstances in which to be skeptical.
The Carl Sagan era Nuclear Winter discussions was almost entirely pop science.
The soundest papers of the time were dressed up back of the envelope Fermi estimations with the thumb heavily on the total devestation of the planet side of the scale.
It suited the pacificists, Sagan, Russell, et al to highlight nuclear danger, It suited diplomats wanting a MAD path to equilibrium standoff backed by the threat of total nuclear destruction.
> He is taking the existence of such bad pop science and smearing an entire field as being completely unscientific.
Rather he took the existence of a bad pop science field (Nuclear Winter papers of the Sagan era) and used that to smear another domain (atmospheric carbon models of 1967 onwards).
> 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 horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?
> 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.
He’s not wrong that predictions 100 years out are going to almost always be wrong. What he is wrong about is that fact is a reason to do nothing. It’s become a very common assertion that clearly since extrapolations are wrong it means we actively should do nothing.
We’re not not drowning in horse shit because extrapolations done in 1900 were wrong. We’re not drowning in horse shit because someone invented another tool which caused the extrapolation to be wrong.
Why? Because it was an incredibly obvious hypothesis once they understood that some atmospheric gases act as a heat reservoir, and burning fossil fuels adds those gases to the atmosphere. A hypothesis which has now been thoroughly confirmed.
> 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 horseshit? 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.
The other big thing that the OP is right about is this:
> 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.