Continuing excerpts from Crichton’s important speech:
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very
well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because
only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you
arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global
warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the
earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were
so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first
pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be
determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft
report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate
change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the
total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also
said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of
observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements
were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence
suggests a discernable human influence on climate."In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it
occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to
second hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and
that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy
dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater
seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides.
MORE TOMORROW.
