Aliens Cause Global Warming
By Michael Crichton
Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003
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 a 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.
The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan
published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of
Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS report, which
attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the
added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate.
At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never
specifically expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows:
Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe etc
Read the rest of it here:
http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/GW-Aliens-Crichton.html
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