On December 17, Roy Cordato alerted us to a lecture presented by noted science fiction writer Michael Crichton on the fantasy world the environmental movement lives in. That speech was given to the Commonwealth Club in September, 2003.
I should note that Crichton gave an earlier version of this talk to students at Cal Tech in January, 2003. The title of the Cal Tech talk was Aliens Cause Global Warming. Go to Aliens. In this lecture, Crichton charts how a belief in extraterrestials eventually led to a belief in global warming. Note, I am using the word “belief.” There is no “proof” that ETs exist. Crichton explains that the “science” behind the belief in ETs is based upon the famous Drake equation, thought up by astrophysicist Frank Drake in 1960 just after the first SETI conference. The formula is supposed to show that the odds for ETs is so great that they must exist. The problem is that the formula is vacuous and unfalsifiable. None of the variables can be computed.Yet, because of the Drake equation, each year billions of dollars are set aside for research, most of it politically motivated, and the scientific community goes on to indulge fantasical speculation.
Switch now to global warming and the idea of a nuclear winter so much discussed in the early 70s. It turns out that the gloom and doom of nuclear winter forcasts is built upon a equation strkingly similar to the Drake equation in which the variables cannot be computed. Yet, it looks and feels like a scientific equation and off to the races we go with poltical agendas taking the lead and science letting itself be disgraced.
Of special note is Crichton’s disgust with that oh most political of scientific magazines, Scientific American, and its treatment of Bjorn Lomborg, author of the bestselling book, The Skeptical Environmentalist.
This piece is must reading for those with any interest in the claims of the “greens.”
