Year: 2004

Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:

[In 1983], 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.

The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on.

According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute.

But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later.

This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold.

What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a
meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It
was political from the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media
campaign that had to be planned weeks or months in advance.

Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be
found in the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was
characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don’t think these guys know
what they’re talking about," other prominent scientists were noticeably
reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It’s an absolutely
atrocious piece of science but…who wants to be accused of being in
favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is
terrible but—perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter team
followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the
editors denying that these statements were ever made, though the
scientists since then have subsequently confirmed their views.

A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted
on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter
effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around
the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should
affect the war plans." None of it happened.

MORE TOMORROW.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.

No, his hard-drive is safe (as far as I know), but he’s hacked at the seduction of sciency by agenda. He recently gave a waaay-politically incorrect speech at Caltech in which he lambasted those he felt were passing off phony science as real science.

This is an important speech, in which Crichton says a number of important things about some very important subjects. Unfortunately, he says so many worthwhile things that the sheer length of the speech will prevent many people from absorbing and benefitting from what he has to say.

Therefore, over the next few days I will serialize excerpts from the speech. These will not be the entirety of the speech, and I strongly encourage you to read the original speech in its entirety, but these excerpts will give you a taste of what he had to say.

First up, Crichton comments on the Drake equation for predicting how many communicating extraterrestrial civilizations there may be in the Milky Way:

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an 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.

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.

MORE TOMORROW.

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH.