Michael Crichton has made millions by writing mass market thrillers that either regurgitate partially understood scientific factoids, or pander to the nasty little revenge fantasies of male white middle-managers. He’s not averse to spicing his novels up with a hefty pinch of racism (the ‘Fu Manchu’ in a three-piece suit Japan bashing in _Rising Sun_) or sexism (in the rather revolting Disclosure). All in all, it’s rather surprising that Caltech should have asked him to deliver a prestigious lecture. The content and tone of that “lecture”:http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html, however, aren’t surprising at all. The speech – which argues that global warming is pseudo-science – is as specious a bit of argumentation as I’ve seen in a while.
Crichton, through a rather extravagant series of logical contortions, argues that believing in global warming is equivalent to believing in extra-terrestrials. As best I can reconstruct his argument, it goes something like the following.
* The search for extra-terrestrial life is a religion rather than a science, because we are not able to fill in any terms in the Drake equation (a famous attempt to quantify, sort of, the possibility that intelligent life exists in our galaxy).
* The scientific ‘consensus’ around predictions of nuclear winter twenty years ago, was incorrect and based on pseudo-science.
* There is scientific consensus that global warming exists, but we are not able properly to quantify its risk.
THEREFORE (cue applause, amazement, gasps of awe from the audience)
_global warming is a pseudo-scientific religion_
It’s hard to know where to start. Crichton makes a couple of reasonable (if hardly novel) points. He sees the Bjorn Lomborg affair as evidence that anyone who disagrees with the prevailing consensus is likely to be treated as a pariah (while notably failing to mention that Lomberg is convinced that global warming is real). He points to the desire of scientists for publicity and grants as a possible corrupting factor. Fair enough. But he then goes on to argue that science is inherently antithetical to consensus.
bq. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
Science is only science when it “has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.” The problem isn’t just that Crichton’s view of science is methodologically and epistemologically naive, and fails hopelessly to describe how science actually makes progress (for a corrective, read “Imre Lakatos”:http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/lakatos/scienceAndPseudoscienceTranscript.htm for starters). It’s that it’s naive in a politically loaded way. Which is another way of saying that it isn’t naive at all.
All of Crichton’s examples of pseudo-science are chosen so as to suggest that the problem with modern science is that it’s prone to lefty political prejudice. The implication is that global warming too is a fantasy, the product of more-or-less deliberately biased computer models. Crichton not only ignores the rather substantial cumulation of physical evidence that suggests that global warming is a real threat. He proposes a model of science under which most of the major theoretical advances of the last few centuries wouldn’t be counted as science. And he does so in pursuit of a dubious goal – to undermine a set of scientific results that he doesn’t like on policy grounds. More than anything else, his style of logic is reminiscent of the creationist quacks who set out to undermine evolution by arguing that it’s a ‘theory’ that hasn’t been ‘proved.’ Caltech can’t be held fully to blame for Crichton’s speech; universities rarely know in advance what their guest speakers are going to say. But it should be a lot more careful about whom it chooses to deliver major talks in the future.
{ 75 comments }
claude tessier 01.20.04 at 3:31 pm
It would be helpful if the ‘debate’ about global warming were presented accurately.
The debate is – or ought to be – whether climate change is affected or exarcebated by human activity. If it is then the question is: what, if anything, should or could we do about it.
If the global warming that we see is but a part of normal fluctuations in global temperature over the centuries, unaffected by human activity, then we don’t need to try to do anything because humans cannot affect large scale climate change.
Aaron 01.20.04 at 3:41 pm
You know, after hearing every single anti-global warming person on the face of the planet (do they realize they argue like creationists?) talk about people predicting global cooling twenty years ago, I’m sort of wondering if this is really true. Anyone have some good citations on this from actual climate researchers, not physicists or some such working out of their field?
Theophylact 01.20.04 at 3:51 pm
You mean, I hope, “creationist quacks”.
Matthew 01.20.04 at 3:56 pm
“If the global warming that we see is but a part of normal fluctuations in global temperature over the centuries […]”
That spin has only been introduced by the valiant defenders of the Co2 status quo. “Global warming” was always meant as a man-made, relatively short-term problem IMHO.
As for Chrichton, he’s probably training for a 2nd career as a prophet for the GW Denial crew, once his books stop being adapted by Hollywood. Probably a lucrative line of business.
Henry 01.20.04 at 4:01 pm
Theophylact – had just spotted that myself, and corrected it, thanks.
Paul Orwin 01.20.04 at 4:11 pm
Cut and pasted from the speech.
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.
Crichton is just plain wrong about this on many levels. First of all, some of the terms can absolutely be known, such as the number of stars in the MW, and the number with planets (these are in fact determined already or determinable w/ present day astronomic tech). Second, it is preposterous to suggest that there is no such thing as an “informed guess”. How does he think inference works? Most people, in science or not, start out with “informed guesses”. Once we have made a prediction, tested it, we then adapt our guess to the new information, and try again.
What is even stranger is that Crichton is an MD, and certainly diagnosis of disease could be considered “informed guessing”! Perhaps that is why he doesn’t practice.
I really enjoyed Andromeda strain, it got me interested in microbiology (in spite of the now obvious flaws in the science and engineering). I also liked Jurassic Park. I really, really didn’t like any of his other novels.
Chad Orzel 01.20.04 at 4:11 pm
Some years ago, I remember somebody on rec.arts.sf.written pointing out that Crichton is basic writing science fiction for Luddites. In contrast to the usual SF method of saying “here’s a neat tidbit of science, let’s extrapolate it to see what cool things might happen,” he says “here’s a neat tidbit of science, let’s extrapolate it to see what horrible things might come of it, thus proving that there are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.”
It’s a reading that fits well with what I’ve read of his stuff, and doesn’t exactly encourage me to read more. Nor to ask him for his opinion of Science in general.
Dr Zen 01.20.04 at 4:19 pm
“Caltech can’t be held fully to blame for Crichton’s speech; universities rarely know in advance what their guest speakers are going to say. But it should be a lot more careful about whom it chooses to deliver major talks in the future.”
I had to double-take when I saw that. The best way to prove a man who says the consensus silences its critics is to call for him to be silenced?
Jeez.
Crichton is largely wrong about how science makes progress (but Lakatos, while improving on Popper’s description of how science progresses, hardly proved him wrong about what *is* scientific), but he surely isn’t wrong to suggest that scientific faddism is as prevalent as pseudoscience.
Henry 01.20.04 at 4:59 pm
>The best way to prove a man who says the consensus silences its critics is to call for him to be silenced?
That’s a rather odd reading of my post. There’s a rather big difference between suggesting that someone ought not be invited to deliver a major speech, and calling for him to be silenced. The reason why I think that Crichton’s invitation was a mistake isn’t because he expressed unpopular views – there are plenty of critics who could have been invited who have rather stronger intellectual credentials. It was a mistake because Crichton’s reasoning is shoddy, specious, politicized, and misinformed. Good enough reasons, no? If a ‘creation scientist’ had been invited, it would have been regarded as an outrage. I don’t see that Crichton’s argument is any better – it uses the precise same tactic of arguing from the fundamental uncertainty of the scientific enterprise to try to undermine results that Crichton doesn’t like. He’s not attacking faddism in science; he’s attacking fads that he finds objectionable on policy grounds. There’s a difference. I think that Chad is right – Crichton is a Luddite at heart.
loren 01.20.04 at 5:31 pm
just out of curiosity, does anyone want to defend the use of inordinately complex computer models with heaps of uncertainty in making imporant policy decisions? (cough, cough — macroeconomists — cough). I’ve always thought that you could make a strong case for dramatic reductions in emissions (somewhat indirectly) without ever appealing to the parameter estimates churned out by global climate change models. Specifically, there’s a case for avoiding continued dependence on fossil fuels that persuades me regardless of what scientists think they know about the long-term human impact on our climate.
alkali 01.20.04 at 5:37 pm
You know, after hearing every single anti-global warming person on the face of the planet (do they realize they argue like creationists?) talk about people predicting global cooling twenty years ago, I’m sort of wondering if this is really true.
It is true, but half the story. In the 70s, climate scientists recognized two phenomena that might affect global temperature: (1) greenhouse warming, i.e., putting CO2 into the atmosphere, and (2) cooling caused by particulate discharge, i.e., soot. At least some climate scientists speculated that the cooling effect of soot might overwhelm the warming effect of greenhouse gases. That didn’t happen, probably at least in part because soot has been controlled.
(I’d be willing to bet that at the time, the anti-enviros were breathlessly informing us that the two effects would exactly balance, so we had nothing to worry about. It would be interesting to see.)
There is some discussion over what effect greenhouse warming will have on ocean currents, particularly the Gulf Stream, which warms Europe with tropical water. I have seen it suggested that melting Arctic ice could stop the Gulf Stream and trigger an Ice Age. No one really knows what the answer to that question is, which is not the same as saying it’s nothing to worry about.
nnyhav 01.20.04 at 6:00 pm
Latest developments.
XXX 01.20.04 at 6:06 pm
Crichton is right that global warming is not a scientific theory, certainly not in the Popperian sense.
What tests do its proponents set for it? Scientific theories must be capable of refutation; all other theories are psudoscience. When Einstein formulated his General Theory he devised three objective tests; even one failure would refute the entire theory and it would have to be abandoned. The global warming people have put forth nothing in the way of an objective test for their beliefs. And beliefs are precisely what they are.
claude tessier 01.20.04 at 6:14 pm
‘“Global warming†was always meant as a man-made, relatively short-term problem IMHO.’
My point is that in order to come to an intelligent conclusion we have to break it down into two (at least) separate issues:
1. Is the warming real or a statistical anomaly (after all, we are having a particularly cold winter here in the Northeast U.S.).
2. If it is real is it because of human activity? If it’s caused by human activity there’s little point creating major economic dislocations that will have no effect.
claude tessier 01.20.04 at 6:16 pm
I meant ‘if it is not real…’
sorry
loren 01.20.04 at 6:38 pm
xxx, I disagree with your definition: when a conjecture or hypothesis is extraordinarily complex, hard to test, and fraught with uncertainty, then it’s pseudoscience? That doesn’t ring true to me. Our models and studies of emissions and climate change might never yield the sort of precise knowledge that we’d like to have (“look, gravity bends light! see?”), at least, not until it’s too late to do anything about the nasty consequences that may be in store for us if some of those hypotheses are correct. But I don’t think that qualifies as “pseudoscience,” which to me suggests such things as controversial hypotheses masquerading as self-evident assumptions (“ordered complexity implies a designer”), or outright fallacies of inference and errors of fact, perhaps hidden behind familar jargon (“in information-theoretic terms, evolution of the eye is impossible”), or cleverly disguised as well-established results from other sciences (“quantum electrodynamics suggests that consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, and so we don’t need to age, and crime will be reduced if we meditate on it correctly”).
nnyhav 01.20.04 at 6:59 pm
More blogosphere warming.
Novelists’ polemics tend to be over the top (cf. LeCarre, Vidal, Mailer …); hardly seems worth rebutting reasoning that owes more to narrative structure than to standards of evidence or logic. Assumption’s another matter (assumption’s happenin’ here …)
Sebastian Holsclaw 01.20.04 at 7:19 pm
Are the temperatures projected by realistic estimates within the normal variation of the planets temperature? If the answer is no, the next question is whether or not human activity can meaningfully avert this change outside of the normal variation.
If the answer to the first question is yes or if the answer to the second is no, the global warming debate becomes merely interesting, with very few real political consequences.
I think the provisional answer at the moment is that it that realistic projections of global warming put them well within the normal variations, and according to pro-Kyoto scientists human changes such as Kyoto will at best delay the onset of their predictions by 3-5 years.
That is what the science shows. The pseudo-science (and it does exist) is the freak-out that Greenpeace encourages with wilder claims. Crichton should have made the distinction clearer. But he never did know how to come to a conclusion. I swear I would like his books more if he got someone else to write the last 30 pages.
mark 01.20.04 at 8:42 pm
Quoting from Claude:
“If it’s caused by human activity there’s little point creating major economic dislocations that will have no effect.”
Do we really know that there will be major economic dislocations? I have heard this assertion over and over but isn’t this based on some untested economic reasoning or some complicated unvalidated economic model? How do we know that there will not be some as-yet undiscovered economic feedbacks that will actually make Kyoto-type agreements beneficial to the economy? Are economic-based models fundamentally better than physics-based atmospheric models? If not, why is there such a double standard? Why do climate modellers put uncertainties on their results, but I never hear any uncertainties associated with the costs of implementing Kyoto? Why do scientists give economists a free pass? Where should the burden of proof lie?
dsquared 01.20.04 at 8:49 pm
The global warming people have put forth nothing in the way of an objective test for their beliefs
The test “the globe is warming” seems pretty objective to me!
If the answer is no, the next question is whether or not human activity can meaningfully avert this change outside of the normal variation
What about the case where human activity can make thigns worse, but not better?
Dave Greene 01.20.04 at 8:58 pm
A DIFFERENT VIEW: I wish more people would divide the global warming issue into two. First, is it getting warmer?
(Answer: Yes, at least over the past 100-200 years).
Second, *why* is it getting warmer?
(Answer: We’re really not sure how much is due to man-made greenhouse gases and how much is due to other factors.)
Until we get a better handle on the second part, it’s awfully hard to know what is the correct action to take. I think that is Crichton’s point, and I agreee.
For more, see: http://baysense.typepad.com/baysense/2003/12/crichton_aliens.html
Rv. Agnos 01.20.04 at 9:16 pm
There’s really a third question:
Assuming (a) global warming is really happening, and (b) it is caused by humans burning fossil fuels, then we have to get to
(c) can changes in human behavior effectively change the future course of global warming?
In a Scientific American article in 2000, two geologists posit that, because humanity has already used about half of the available fossil fuels in the ground, there will soon be a fuel shortage.
http://www.miracosta.edu/home/kmeldahl/articles/cheapoil.pdf
The article was called “The End of Cheap Oil”, and was written from the perspective of oil supply, but if it is true, then there’s really a limit of how much environmental damage can be done.
If global warming is real and significant and caused by humans burning oil, it seems to have a natural limit to the amount of damage that can be done (i.e., the amount of readily obtainable oil). It would also make environmental treaties like Kyoto unnecessary.
Mark 01.20.04 at 9:54 pm
And, coming back to my questions about economic predictions vs. physics predictions, maybe there are valid economic reasons to implement Kyoto. Even if there are is no significant climate effect, it could be argued that there is a long-term economic benefit from preserving this non-renewable resource. I’m not sure economists have put this effect into their models.
Sebastian Holsclaw 01.20.04 at 10:04 pm
“I have heard this assertion over and over but isn’t this based on some untested economic reasoning or some complicated unvalidated economic model? How do we know that there will not be some as-yet undiscovered economic feedbacks that will actually make Kyoto-type agreements beneficial to the economy?”
Because such things would be economically valid with or without Kyoto. If there was some cheap alternative to oil it would already be in use. People don’t use oil for fun, they do it because it is one of the cheapest (and in many cases only) way of doing the things it does. And considering the things oil is used for, it takes absolutely no complicated economic model to understand the economic problems a severe curtailment when involve. Most transportation in the world uses fossil fuel of one type or another. Those that don’t use it in their engine use it in the electricity generation at the plant which they use. In either case if the cost goes up dramatically it effects absolutely everything that has to be moved from place to place. (There is an out for electric transportation–nuclear power generation, but I don’t think I’ll see Greenpeace demanding nuclear power anytime in my life).
D-squared, I agree that there may be a case where humans can make things worse and not better. And if environmental fundamentalists believe that is the case, they still need to show that we make things worse enough that the remedy isn’t even more painful. Saying that the Earth is going to be 10 degrees warmer on its own and we will make it a tenth of a degree worse doesn’t cut it with me. And so far as I can tell, they can’t even show that.
dsquared 01.20.04 at 10:10 pm
Because such things would be economically valid with or without Kyoto. If there was some cheap alternative to oil it would already be in use.
This is blackboard economics. Empirically, technological advances are clustered around wars. There is decent evidence that necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.
Mark 01.20.04 at 10:27 pm
“People don’t use oil for fun”
Actually, recreation is a very large fraction of its use in the U.S.
“it takes absolutely no complicated economic model to understand the economic problems”
Likewise, it takes no complicated physical model to understand the climate problems associated with greenhouse gasses. I can solve a 1-D radiative transport equation that gives me a good approximation. The devil is in the details (feedbacks and so forth). I’m not an expert in economics, but from what little I understand, economics also has feedbacks and potentially unforseen variables (like innovation) that are not accounted for in the simple models. I believe that scientists tend to be more humble than economists who say thinks like:
“it takes absolutely no complicated economic model to understand the economic problems”
My interpretation:
“We don’t need to follow the same standards that we impose on you scientists. In economics, we simply issue proclamations.”
loren 01.20.04 at 11:08 pm
dsquared: “Empirically, technological advances are clustered around wars.”
… and porn: necessity isn’t the only mother of invention (although I guess a case could be made …)
alphacoward 01.20.04 at 11:21 pm
And I observed Michael, that you also made a leap of faith. You asserted unequivocally that global warming is NOT real. You do this because somebody has told you so (i think you’ve been reading junkscience a little too much), and you preach it with the same faith and passion as global warming advocate.
Backword Dave 01.20.04 at 11:26 pm
I’m with the anti-Crichton consesus, but Paul Orwin is plain wrong with:
Crichton is just plain wrong about this on many levels. First of all, some of the terms can absolutely be known, such as the number of stars in the MW, and the number with planets (these are in fact determined already or determinable w/ present day astronomic tech).
First, because we’re in the Milky Way, we can’t see all of it; what we know of its structure comes from inference, and what we know of other galaxies. Second, I read one of Carl Sagan’s books when a teenager which made many predictions about the structure of other solar systems: none so far discovered look anything like them; they all have supermassive (far larger than Jupiter, itself larger than the rest of the solar system) in very close orbits around their primary. There could be no Sol-like systems in the universe. If earth-like planets exist the systems we know of must constitute a minority of those out there– an unreasonable assumption at present.
But I have no idea what the Drake equation has to do with global warming (itself an idea that Sagan contributed to).
abran 01.20.04 at 11:31 pm
r.v.:
While burning oil is certainly a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, it is by no means the only one. Burning coal, for example, also produces copious quantities of greenhouse gasses (even with “clean coal” technologies) and our coal reserves are decidedly less limited than our oil reserves.
sebastian:
asserting tautologically that “if there was some cheap alternative to oil it would already be in use” is patently untrue. Consider a similar assertion from the 19th century: “if there was some cheap alternative to steam power, it would already be in use”.
More concretely, you assume that the incentives to develop oil based and renewable based technologies are identical.
Of course they are not. Fossil fuels are limited and thus controllable and exploitable for a profit, so there is much incentive for those who control the resources to focus on technologies that utilize those resources. Renewable technologies on the other hand (i.e. wind and solar) utilize resources that are not controllable and exploitable, so there is less incentive to develop technologies that utilize these resources, as the profit will only be made through the distribution of the equipment and not the fuel. Thus there is less incentive to develop these technologies, and indeed there is less government money spent on research into renewables than there is on subsidies for the nuclear and fossil fuel industries. If research and development funds were distributed equally, and the fossil fuel industry was deprived of the subsidies that artificially lower its costs, renewable technologies are (arguably, depending on who you read) already cheaper than fossil fuel technologies, especially if you incorporate externalities (public health, environmental degradation, etc.).
Oil is only cheap because it has been subsidized and its societal costs are not internalized.
There will of course be changeover costs if we try and transform our energy economy. Those expenditures will, however, create economic benefits (albeit for a different group of people than the ones who currently control the industry…) and the economic and societal savings from health care and (dare I say it) wars may in fact balance it out.
It is true that the scale (both spatial and temporal) of global climate processes makes controlled experiments impossible and theories of global warming difficult to test. The question for policy makers is how long to we engage in a behavior that has some probability of destroying, or at least fundamentally altering, our planet. You cannot prove to me that smoking will give me cancer; that hypothesis will only be decided when I either get cancer or die of other causes. All that is left for me to do is decide based on my perception of risk and the benefits I find in smoking whether to continue or not.
To my mind the possibility, which certainly has a great deal of at least circumstantial evidence behind it, that humans are causing global warming is enough to suggest that we should cease the behaviors that have the potential of destroying our planet. But that’s just me….
Aaron 01.20.04 at 11:40 pm
I don’t want to argue about Kyoto because it’s dead and it’s a nonissue. I do agree that there are two issues related to global warming.
(1) Is the Earth getting warmer?
Answer: Yes. All the urban heat island stuff and atmospheric measurements have essentially gone by the wayside. I’m not convinced there are any serious atmospheric scientists that would disagree with this.
(2) Is this warming due to human effects?
Answer: Probably. The scientific consensus on this isn’t completely clear. There are variabilities in the climate models and a lot of uncertainties. The atmosphere is a complicated place after all. Nonetheless, it remains the consensus view of the climatological community that this is true.
Now, I happen to have known a climatologist or two in my life. Given the choice between trusting them, or trusting physicists working outside of their field of expertise and various people at the AEI, I’ll stick with the climatologists.
It helps that every time I’ve actually seen a climatologist and one of the anti-global warming types talk about the issue, the anti-warming person got creamed. Just like the creationists, they can cerrypick a lot of out-of-contex or out-of-date studies to produce an apparently persuasive case, but it all falls apart when confronted by someone with actual expertise.
Alas, I’m not such a person, but given the choice above, I think my answer is clear.
mandarin 01.20.04 at 11:47 pm
…Crichton is basic[ally] writing science fiction for Luddites.
His literary model must be Mary Shelley. Idiots, the pair of them.
Sebastian Holsclaw 01.21.04 at 12:03 am
“Consider a similar assertion from the 19th century: “if there was some cheap alternative to steam power, it would already be in use”.”
On the contrary, it was not cheap to obtain oil at the time. At the time it was easier to make steam by burning coal because coal was easy to obtain.
“Renewable technologies on the other hand (i.e. wind and solar) utilize resources that are not controllable and exploitable, so there is less incentive to develop technologies that utilize these resources, as the profit will only be made through the distribution of the equipment and not the fuel.”
People make profit on similar substances, pharmaceuticals, which have similar research costs because of patent protections. That is the economic question.
The rest of that paragraph goes on a conspiracy path much like the ‘health care companies make more money treating AIDS patients which is why they have not discovered (or in the strong version of the conspiracy released) the cure’. The answer is the same in both cases. Even if it were true that the powerful interests were in avoiding oil alternatives/cure for AIDS personal interests of researchers do not align with that. Any single company that could cure AIDS or replace oil would become far more rich than they could imagine. They wouldn’t care about the ‘industry interests’.
You also assume that all that is lacking is more research. This avoids dealing with the fact that some things may flatly not exist. Furthermore why does some non-oil country not decide to research it? They could be the next Middle East in terms of wealth. Why isn’t India doing it with all their research capital?
Hell, why don’t leftists get together and invest in renewable energy research. It would be relatively easy if people just spent the money, so they say, and they could kill off the evil oil companies. $100 from each leftist must approach the level needed. Combine it with money from France and surely you could get a great research budget that would pay for itself. You could save the world, and I wouldn’t begrudge you anything. Hmm, perhaps I could start a company. Would it be bad to start a company where I believed there was little chance of success, but would be thrilled if we succeeded?
SqueakyRat 01.21.04 at 12:12 am
If global warming is real and significant and caused by humans burning oil, it seems to have a natural limit to the amount of damage that can be done (i.e., the amount of readily obtainable oil). It would also make environmental treaties like Kyoto unnecessary.
Posted by Rv. Agnos at January 20, 2004 09:16 PM
Uh huh. And if those limits lie somewhere beyond the point where large portions of the earth become uninhabitable, or agriculturally useless, or lose their indigenous animal and plant species, that’s all OK, because there’s a “natural limit” to the damage we can do?
You fucking moron. “Nature” is not in the business of protecting the sort of planet we want to live on. Nature does what it does, Rv., and it ain’t always pretty.
cafl 01.21.04 at 12:15 am
A small point to Backword Dave who says Sagan:
“made many predictions about the structure of other solar systems: none so far discovered look anything like them; they all have supermassive (far larger than Jupiter, itself larger than the rest of the solar system) in very close orbits around their primary.”
There is a bias toward finding supermassive planets close to their primaries given the methods leading to our current inventory of known extra-solar planetary systems. Such systems have been discovered by first observing brightness variations as the planet passes through our line of sight to its primary.
loren 01.21.04 at 12:17 am
squeakyrat: “You fucking moron.”
easy there, big fella. Personally, I come to CT for the civil and informed exchanges by decent and thoughtful folks. I doubt I’m alone in this. If I wanted nasty flamewars I’d still be hanging out on usenet.
tim 01.21.04 at 12:39 am
First, climatologists are physicists, or chemists or both. They’re not like your typical TV weather reporter, and their field is not like the “earth science” class you had at age 12. They even conduct experiments – releasing trace gases and watching their distribution, triggering rain or lightning, etc. Some in the lab, some in the field. It isn’t all computer modeling, and the models use numbers based in real-world measurements. Even Popper, with his axe to grind, would consider much climate research to be science (though perhaps not the numerical models taken in isolation).
Second, the debates among climatologists nowadays are not over whether there is human-exacerbated climate change – melting polar ice, rise in sea level, more tropical storms, etc. – but over how large the effects are (one or four degrees), and what the specific consequences for each spot on the globe will be.
Third, there are some policy recommendations that are inherently politically conservative, in the sense of being fairly risk-averse in the face of uncertainty about the magnitude of the effects. If you know there is some effect of carbon emissions (and CFCs, etc.)on climate, and are unclear how to reverse the effects later on, then the risk-averse thing to do is limit greenhouse gas emissions until more is known. This doesn’t mean consigning the world to bicycles and rickshaws, it means installing cleaner tech on factories and the like. The costs are not prohibitive, merely nonzero. That such measures are opposed by some who call themselves conservative, shows their moniker is mistaken. Crichton’s talk sounds like more of the same.
abran 01.21.04 at 12:56 am
Sebastian,
I’m puzzled by your reference to pharmaceuticals, last time I checked people consumed their pills and then returned to the pharmacist to refill them (much as one does with gas in a car).
Your point about coal vs. oil availability in the 19th century is well taken, although I would remind you that much oil exploration (outside of the middle east) is not done on the cheap, and is indeed supported by generous subsidies from governments.
I don’t think it is conspiratorial to assert that vested political and monetary powers are working in their own self interests. The point is that there will never be as much money to be made off of renewable energy as there is off of fossil fuels. Once the initial capital expenditure is made, there is little ongoing cost. This is indeed true of other segments of the economy (not pharmaceuticals however), and so there is still a profit to be made, just not as much of one as is made through fossil fuel distribution. If a renewable energy structure does develop along current lines, there will be no “next Middle East”, because there won’t be a resource to distribute, beyond the machinery and the technology. Perhaps there will be a next Japan, but certainly not a region that controls the essential energy source for the global economy because the resources will be distributed.
The issue is the change over cost. Renewable technologies already exist (not hypothetically) that can produce electricity at rates that are competitive with the subsidized rates we pay for nuclear and fossil fuel generated electricity. Again, these technologies are even cheaper if we accurately incoporate the externalities of fossil fuel use and exploitation into the cost of consumption.
There is little doubt that we will run out of fossil fuels eventually and be forced to change our infrastructure to utilize some new energy source. You seem to be suggesting that we wait until we have exploited all remaining fossil fuel reserves(and the associated materials that can be derived from them ->plastic), risked fundamentally altering our global climate, and then pay to change over our infrastructure. I propose we begin implementing the viable technologies now, transfer some of the money that is being used to subsidize fossil fuel consumption into research for more technology, and begin the process of weaning our economy now while we still have oil reserves left.
Every time increased efficiency standards are proposed, industry weaps and moans that they are prohibitive and will destroy the industry and then goes about the business of implementing them and continues to turn a profit. Many of the current economic arguments against seem to fall in the same vein.
The global climate is a massively non-linear system, which is why it is so difficult to predict what effect global warming will have as well as to determine the extent to which humans are responsible. The economy is a similarly non-linear system with innovation leading to unforeseen industries, effects, and profits (see the internet).
We can expect (or hope, take your pick) that changing our energy infrastructure will have similar unforeseen effects, thus avoiding the economic catastrophe predicted by those on the right while simultaneously avoiding the ecological catastrophe predicted by those on the left.
Kramer 01.21.04 at 1:00 am
Just saw this post so I’m perhaps a bit late. regardless of that, one way in which Crichton’s view of science is “hopelessly naive” lies in his ignorance of the role of probability. I’ve expanded a bit more on that theme at http://ourtake.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_ourtake_archive.html#107357083489396810 .
DJW 01.21.04 at 1:03 am
In response to:
“Consider a similar assertion from the 19th century: “if there was some cheap alternative to steam power, it would already be in useâ€.
Sebastian Holdsclaw says:
On the contrary, it was not cheap to obtain oil at the time. At the time it was easier to make steam by burning coal because coal was easy to obtain.
But that’s the point. Nothing is cheap at first, we have to start using it to make it cheap. And that’s exactly what’s happening–alternative energies are far, far cheaper than 20 years ago. They’d get cheaper faster if there were more substantial economic incentives for harvesting them. Eventually, of course, they’ll stop getting substantially cheaper at a speedy rate, but where exactly that leveling off will take place is an open and unknown question.
Ben 01.21.04 at 1:31 am
abran is stealing all the posts that I was going to make (and doing a really great job, too), in order to make the past few minutes not a total waste of time (for me), here’s a little aside.
What follows is just an example of why purely economic analysis of environmental issues is incomplete.
One of the most important issues in global climate change actually is energy conservation (maybe even the most important issue).
If a fuel source is cheap and easily available, there is little economic reason to worry about conservation (it won’t save much money and the fuel’s not going to run out, so why worry?). If our energy is cheap, we won’t worry as much about efficiency in our machines, so a lot of that energy will be lost as heat (but if it doesn’t drive the price up, why should we care?). But that heat will go into the atmosphere. This would cause global warming in a direct manner, regardless of the presence of greenhouse gasses. And it would also be very expensive to fix.
Of course, the only source of energy of this type would be fusion, which is still a long way away (and, because of the above, I am kinda glad). Coal is close, being limited, but we still have several hundred years worth of it (I read a release by Mobil a couple of years back estimating somewhere between 150-300 years for coal and on the order of 50 to 75 for both oil and natural gas).
EricD 01.21.04 at 1:32 am
“You know, after hearing every single anti-global warming person on the face of the planet (do they realize they argue like creationists?) talk about people predicting global cooling twenty years ago, I’m sort of wondering if this is really true. Anyone have some good citations on this from actual climate researchers, not physicists or some such working out of their field?”
You should take a look at
http://www.wmc.care4free.net/sci/iceage/
which addresses the question “Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the 1970s?” Short answer: no.
Ben 01.21.04 at 2:03 am
Oh, yeah. I forgot. Crichton’s an idiot (maybe ignorant about science is more accurate).
To wit: I went on a road trip with my parents about a year ago and my mom picked up Crichton’s “Prey” for some reason (if for some god-awful reason you are thinking about reading this book, you probably shouldn’t read the rest of this). It was only our own Crichton-protagonist-like determination that got us through it (and I liked Jurassic park (I did read it when I was 12, though)). The story is flying swarms of “nanomachines” using “genetic algorithms” (so they evolve) and “distributed intelligence” (so the individual ‘bots can act cohesively as a swarm) become killers (in order to reproduce somehow) and learn to communicate and then learn how to make themselves look like people and also take over people to make them do their bidding (along with gaining super-strength) but luckily they have bacterial components, so the good guys release a bacteria killing virus to win (I think), My dad actually stopped the tape at one point when Crichton for no reason writes about the good guy deciding whether he should drink tea or coffee (it sure was an exciting decision) and chooses tea because it has more caffeine (which is really untrue according to what I’ve known all my life as well as coffeefaq.com). The rest of the book was as stupid as I hopefully made it sound. Does he just see how many false statements he can put in a book now, or what? My mind was boggled.
Eli Rabett 01.21.04 at 2:23 am
Somewhat behind the curve here but in answer to Aaron about how many folk in the 1970s were writing scientific articles about the coming ice age see:
http://www.wmc.care4free.net/sci/iceage/
Some folk have odd hobbies.
andrew 01.21.04 at 2:35 am
Whether the globe is warming is an empirical question, obviously, so why do so many people have an opinion on it, and why do these opinions almost always fall along political lines?
Looks fishy, but I’m not a scientist, so what do I know?
Jim Norton 01.21.04 at 3:04 am
Interesting comments. Please see my comments on Crichton’s other speech:
http://info-pollution.com/Crichton.htm
Rv. Agnos 01.21.04 at 3:33 am
“Uh huh. And if those limits lie somewhere beyond the point where large portions of the earth become uninhabitable, or agriculturally useless, or lose their indigenous animal and plant species, that’s all OK, because there’s a “natural limit†to the damage we can do?”
Chosing to ignore the ad hominem (I’ve been called worse) . . .
My point was not the unremarkable one that limited resources cannot do infinite damage.
Rather, my point was that under the theory put forth by M. King Hubbert (the “Hubbert Curve”), oil resources will be withdrawn in basically a bell curve, with maximum withdrawal at the midpoint of the curve — the point where exactly half the resources have been used and exactly half have been left in the ground.
The theory was confirmed empirically when Hubbert correctly predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970, and decline each year thereafter. (Large investments have permitted brief plateaus, but the bell curve prediction was essentially accurate.)
If world oil reserve predictions are accurate, then we are about at the mid-point of the world’s reserves now. Therefore, future oil extraction and use will never be substantially higher than they are today (as we are at the peak of the bell curve), and will soon become less. Then “necessity” will require us to “invent” something else.
Oil is especially useful due to its portability (I don’t expect coal-burning cars to come on the market any time soon), so I wouldn’t expect the drop in oil consumption to be made up for with other lesser fossil fuels.
I guess my observation is that if fossil fuel use will necessarily decline naturally, due to the laws of nature and physics, then that is a fruitless avenue to expend resources. If global warming is real and reversible (and I have no reason to think that it is not), then resources should be better spent on technologies to reverse the greenhouse trend — not on attempts at worldwide conservationism.
Jeffrey Kramer 01.21.04 at 3:47 am
…Crichton is basic[ally] writing science fiction for Luddites.
His literary model must be Mary Shelley. Idiots, the pair of them.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (the 1819 novel, that is; not the Branagh movie with the same title) is not reducible to the thesis that “there are SOME THINGS that man was NOT MEANT to KNOW.” Disaster comes, not so much because Dr. Frankenstein was “meddling in God’s domain,” but because he had a failure of nerve and abandoned his own creation.
Alex 01.21.04 at 4:28 am
Just to re-iterate what’s been put here already. First, there is no doubt of global warming. Second, there is no doubt that CO2 can contribute to global warming. Third, most climatologists think that humans produce enough CO2 to affect the climate– though as pointed out, the degree is unclear. Finally, there is no reason to think that climatologists are positing global warming caused by CO2 as some sort of ideology. These guys are scientists, and their consensus is quite good on this subject. Crichton sounds like a crank, and clearly he is ideologically motivated and therefore hard to trust his logic.
Mark Bahner 01.21.04 at 4:42 am
“My point is that in order to come to an intelligent conclusion we have to break it down into two (at least) separate issues:
1. Is the warming real or a statistical anomaly (after all, we are having a particularly cold winter here in the Northeast U.S.).
2. If it is real is it because of human activity?”
Go to:
http://markbahner.50g.com
See:
“Is it happening?” and
“Are humans causing it?”
:-)
Mark Bahner 01.21.04 at 4:50 am
“The pseudo-science (and it does exist) is the freak-out that Greenpeace encourages with wilder claims.”
“Pseudo-science” are the IPCC TAR’s projections for the 21st century.
gmoke 01.21.04 at 4:51 am
Stratospheric ozone depletion proved that human beings can affect the global atmosphere significantly. Even S. Fred Singer has admitted that ozone depletion is a man-made phenomenon after argung against that fact for many years.
Whether Global Warming is real or not is a moot question in my mind. CO2 is a waste product of combustion. As a believer in quality and a frugal SOB, I would suggest that we should follow the advice of W. Edwards Deming and endeavor to establish systems where we actively work towards zero emissions, zero waste, as Deming worked towards zero defect.
One must also remember that Michael Crichton wrote an essay in which he reported on his attendance at “spoon bending parties.” He attested in the essay that he was able to bend spoons without physical force.
Guess he isn’t able to understand the scientific method with his Harvard Med School education.
JimB 01.21.04 at 5:12 am
“Crichton is right that global warming is not a scientific theory, certainly not in the Popperian sense.”
Duh. “Global warming” isn’t really a theory, except in trivial sense that any other one-off prediction like the scores of a football match might be called a theory. It’s importance is that it is a highly consistent general result across current numerical climate models. These models are incorporate a wide theoretical framework from the sciences of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, astronomy, chemistry, and so on together with real earth observations, and computational methods.
Exact results vary between models; the models all use different sets of simplifications of the real planet. (We are unable to spin up a test planet for a series of multi-decade test runs.) These models may have consistent bias from bad or incomplete science, or other defects that produce general biased results. Outside the modelling community itself no one seems at all interested in demonstrating such a bias. Why? Basically, it’s much to complicated for your average dork commentator.
It seems obvious to me that discovery of such defects and revision of the models is the essential activity that will improve the reliability of – or even potentially refute – the results, not critiques of SETI, not pronouncements on the past successes or failures of Science, not discussion of the motives or whacky statements (etc) of various groups, nor other like stuff.
msg 01.21.04 at 8:31 am
Abran –
yes, for exactly the kind of reasoned discourse Loren defends so calmly, and for being right into the bargain.
–
So much of the hard science seems arcane to the layman. Though I had no trouble recognizing Crichton’s clenched anality after two pages of one book.
Temperature records are kept, averaged out, collated. The last decade has seen six of the hottest years since record keeping began.
Did we do that?
We’re wired to get alert at minute traces of smoke in the air. That mechanism is blunted in most of us for obvious environmental reasons, but it’s there, as anyone who’s lived in or near combustible timber in hot dry summers can attest.
We lack a commensurate deep-brain response to environmental catastrophe at the scale being discussed. Only intelligence and courage.
–
Jeffrey Kramer-
Mary Shelley’s masterpiece is fully titled “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus”. With reason.
Dave F 01.21.04 at 10:58 am
If there was any doubt in my mind that the debate on global warming and the likely human role in it was a political one, this thread has dispelled it. Crichton is a populariser, he writes fiction mainly. The only point I thought he made was the valid one about model-making and empirical trial. The models, however rigorous, can produce only predictions — and how much do we know about long weather cycles after all? Six years of warmer weather do not a climate change make, not by any climatologist’s yardstick.
And indeed, consensus is not synonymous with accurate. Galileo’s experience is painful testfimony to that.
I’m not c oncerned to reject or accept the notion of global warming in the long term since it does not seem to me a question of faith, merely an interesting one whose outcome is unknown.
The record of doomsayers (not just the second ice age forecasters, but also, for example, the “population bomb” crowd, notably Ehrlich) is a dismal one.
Every age has ’em. The trouble is we are saturated with their stuff via mass media (often laughably distorted and alarmist). It’s really pointless to live your life like Chicken Little.
The Aids epidemic is real, of that there is no doubt and ample evidence in the form of mass deaths. But the projections that suggest it is going to wipe out a significant percentage of the populations of various regions are dubious and already being revised downwards quite sharply in some African countries.
Projections are not “hard” science.
raj 01.21.04 at 12:34 pm
I find it interesting that, on most blogs and message boards, posts that even only tangentially relate to global warming call up so much comment.
I’m surprised to see anyone giving Crichton the time of day on scientific issues, given the fact that he was trained merely as a physician and is currently an author of pulp fiction but…..
From the post:
>Science is only science when it “has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.†The problem isn’t just that Crichton’s view of science is methodologically and epistemologically naive, and fails hopelessly to describe how science actually makes progress
Actually, that is a bit naive. Scientific progress requires confirmation of proposed theories with the “real world.” I realize that, for example, string theorists are weaving a nice tapestry, but whether their tapestry has anything to do with reality will depend on whether they can confirm their predictions with reality. Einstein proposed observations that might provide evidence for his general theory of relativity (gravity), which were used by researchers. I don’t pay much attention to the literature regarding string theory (I found Greene’s book less than satisfying), but I don’t believe that they have been proposing methods of obtaining evidence for their theory.
From Aaron · January 20, 2004 03:41 PM
>You know, after hearing every single anti-global warming person on the face of the planet (do they realize they argue like creationists?) talk about people predicting global cooling twenty years ago, I’m sort of wondering if this is really true.
It was 30 years ago, in the early 1970s. I recall (I was a sentient being at the time ;-) predictions published in the popular press of global cooling. A couple of years ago, I was caused to do some research on the subject, and discovered that the predictions of global cooling at the time were not really based on science, but on the belief that, given the believed time frames for heating and cooling, “we were overdue for a cooling phase.” In other words, there was no real evidence that cooling was taking place.
dsquared 01.21.04 at 1:01 pm
The record of doomsayers (not just the second ice age forecasters, but also, for example, the “population bomb” crowd, notably Ehrlich) is a dismal one.
As a piece of statistical reasoning, this is right up there with a man who has already fallen ten floors off a twelve-story building saying “all right so far”.
nnyhav 01.21.04 at 1:49 pm
> As a piece of statistical reasoning, this is right up there with a man who has already fallen ten floors off a twelve-story building saying “all right so farâ€. (d^2)
Are you proposing Pascal’s Wager on the Apocalypse?
> Mary Shelley’s masterpiece is fully titled “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheusâ€. With reason. (msg)
YM “With Reason”. HTH.
Matthew 01.21.04 at 2:00 pm
Great comments from Aaron and alban, and others. Very interesting.
Just to add that a lot of “anti-enviro” advocates get away with muddling the debate because of the ignorance of the time-scales. If you look at any of the temperature curves, it’s pretty obvious that the current bout of warming is occurring on a scale of 50-100 years. Clearly this is not a timescale of a global climate evolution from “natural causes”, like the sun getting bigger or something.
While the intricacies of climate models are out of the reach of most, it’s important not to get mislead by such spin.
dsquared 01.21.04 at 8:03 pm
Are you proposing Pascal’s Wager on the Apocalypse?
Yes. Note that the fallacy in Pascal’s Wager is in the misapplication of the predicate “to believe”; you can’t simply choose to believe something that you think is false. In general, it is rational to take out insurance against a disaster of unknown but non-zero likelihood and very high severity.
loren 01.21.04 at 8:15 pm
dsquared: “In general, it is rational to take out insurance against a disaster of unknown but non-zero likelihood and very high severity.”
I keep thinking Rawls rather than Pascal.
Ken 01.21.04 at 8:27 pm
“The debate is – or ought to be – whether climate change is affected or exarcebated by human activity. If it is then the question is: what, if anything, should or could we do about it.”
And another question which needs to be asked is: would humans be better or worse off given a warmer global climate than we have now.
I don’t see any reason to simply assume that our current climate is ideal.
Mark 01.21.04 at 9:34 pm
Just to add that a lot of “anti-enviro†advocates get away with muddling the debate because of the ignorance of the time-scales.
This might be because there is a large intersection between the set of climate change deniers and the set of young-Earth creationists. Neither camp seems to understand how science works, and (as pointed out in the original post) they use the same argument methods. To a large extent that’s because they are the same people.
Antoni Jaume 01.21.04 at 9:53 pm
“I don’t see any reason to simply assume that our current climate is ideal.”
It is not. That is not the point. Rather, from a limited human perspective, that, as we are organized, small changes have the bad habit to be very unsettling. You see, we do not allow people to move freely, and countries which are most directly affected tend to be poor in everything but peoples, so these peoples spill on their neighbours, stressing their societies, and so on.
DSW
Sebastian Holsclaw 01.21.04 at 11:12 pm
“In general, it is rational to take out insurance against a disaster of unknown but non-zero likelihood and very high severity.”
If such insurance is cheap enough. You know better than to forget that part.
You don’t buy such insurance for a 1/10,000 chance of occurence if it represents 1/10 of your yearly income. You have to balance choices. The whole question is how likely is the bad outcome, how costly is the proposed ‘insurance’ and how much of an effect will the proposed ‘insurance’ have. The current state of the scientific inquiry suggests that the answers are very unlikely, very costly, and not very much effect if we implement the proposals.
Sigivald 01.22.04 at 12:09 am
Matthew: Huh?
How does it follow that, since it’s gotten warmer over the past 50-100 years, this cannot be the result of natural events?
Remember the Little Ice Age of the middle ages? It got colder for a few centuries. Then the Medieval Warm Period followed. One imagines that at the beginning and end of those there were noticeable changes over 50-100 years.
Simply saying “there’s no way the sun’s activity could be related” to that does not make it so; Certainly it’s been observed that the sun’s output changes, and over periods we can easily see. Long-duration shifts over decades are not at all implausible.
Remember, we haven’t even been keeping track of temperatures over huge areas, accurately, for more than a century or two.
(While someone claimed that “all the models” support global warming caused by humans, they should recall that other people claim that the models were made to provide that conclusion. If one is looking for X, one’s models tend to find it. That’s the eternal problem with model-based solutions – it’s VERY hard to avoid bias in the models, no matter what side you’re on, since if you get a surprising result, it’s very easy and very tempting to assume the model is wrong, not your expectations. And Crichton was absolutely correct that “consensus” is no way to do science. If the data are sound and the theory works, consensus won’t be needed to argue your case; if the data are not sound, your case is wrong even if the fad of the moment produces consensus, or at least a vocal simulacrum of consensus among those making a living studying the field. Odd how profit-motive and greed are never brought up as a motive in this context by people ordinarily ready to admit they’re motives in other contexts, no?)
praktike 01.22.04 at 2:32 am
This is all very interesting.
I’m of the school that says that a few % points of GPD is a trivial cost for the wealthiest nation on Earth to pay to find out whether anything we can do will prevent potential catastophes like the submersion of Southern Louisiana.
I find it odd that many of those who advanced a similar argument WRT the Iraq war eschew such logic here.
And finally, I’ll note that the world’s largest reinsurance companies are quite worried about climate change.
raj 01.22.04 at 3:41 am
My boyfriend and I (both males) have no children and don’t intend to have any. Accordingly, we have both agreed not to worry about global warming or any of the other calamaties that have been predicted. If the conservatives–those who are supposedly concerned about fam’ly values–don’t care about what their children and grandchildren might have to face, why should we?
I’m being sarcastic, but only slightly so.
pkwill 01.22.04 at 5:21 am
I don’t get why people seem to imply that modelers are idiots — they know exactly the limitations of what they’re doing. A *lot* of effort in science is devoted to understanding and quantifying sources of error, and modelers are no different.
It’s harder for modelers to get things right, of course, with a limited set of observations and experiments to check their work with. At first, they were just content to produce realistic weather patterns. Nowadays, a common check is to see how the models check with historical records: ice core samples have given us enough data about the ice ages to be able to run the models in “ice age mode” — and they seem to agree very well with the data. Similarly, after Pinatubo erupted, the models were able to predict the effects well.
Finally, the models are clearly not tuned to generate warming in response to CO2 emissions. They’re tuned to predict the weather, more or less. For the past thirty years though, every major model has had a CO2/temperature corellation. (Although the earlier ones aren’t that useful because they missed some important issues in cloud formation.)
For way too much information, see http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
Dave F 01.22.04 at 11:54 am
Dsquared, the context of my remark was that doomsaying in general is self-defeating. No one has any notion of all future events that might affect the outcome of doomsday projections. The reason the record isn’t good so far is that models must exclude unforeseeable events, whic h are likely to be more numerous and widespread than foreseeable ones. Self-defeating because self-dismantling.
The past record isn’t good because other effects unforeseen at the time were in play. The people who put forward alarmist scenarios (a million species could die, etc) are asking us to live our lives as if their predictions will inevitably prove accurate and the end of life as we know it. I’m not buying it, and if I am falling off a building, well, it’s been 62 years and we all hit the ground eventually.
If global warming is inevitable, lie back and apply the sunscreen.
Boo!
dsquared 01.22.04 at 1:44 pm
Dave: The reason that the record “so far” of doomsaying is bad, is that if the doomsayers had ever been right, we would no longer be around to assess their record. This follows from the definition of “doom”.
Sebastian: You write:
“The current state of the scientific inquiry suggests that the answers are very unlikely, very costly, and not very much effect if we implement the proposals.”
Two points; first, that is not what the current state of scientific inquiry suggests, and second, where do you get your cost estimate from and why should it be regarded as better quality than the climatologists’ estimates?
Ken 01.22.04 at 3:42 pm
The submersion of south Louisiana is already underway, as a result of modifications to our rivers by the Army Corps of Engineers which speeds the flow of soil-bearing water through our fine state and prevents it from depositing replacement soil on its way out as it was previously doing.
Some of the land separating New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico has gone missing, and without nearly universal ownership of skycars, New Orleans is pretty much screwed when the next hurricane makes a direct hit.
Anarch 01.22.04 at 5:04 pm
Sebastian:
You don’t buy such insurance for a 1/10,000 chance of occurence if it represents 1/10 of your yearly income. You have to balance choices. The whole question is how likely is the bad outcome, how costly is the proposed ‘insurance’ and how much of an effect will the proposed ‘insurance’ have.
You know better than to forget a part too, Sebastian: not just how likely the bad outcome is, but how bad it is. So we’re right back to gambling with the devil and the St Petersburg paradox: how do you strategize when one of your outcomes (global warming exists and will wipe out all human life on the planet) has nonzero probability and infinite disutility?
Dave F 01.22.04 at 8:06 pm
Dsquared, I believe you are deliberately ignoring my main point: I don’t see the point of heeding doomsday warnings because only an all-knowing god (if he existed) would be an authority worth heeding, and he or she (if extant) isn’t saying anything. If this time the merchants of doom are right, purely by statistical fluke, we won’t be around to appreciate it. I won’t especially. I will not be moved by this kind of manipulation, and that is what it is. Science has no business in advocacy, which is fatal for objectivity.
Scott Martens 01.23.04 at 11:01 am
Anarch’s got it right. I remember reading somewhere about how New Guinea natives walk funny because they’re afraid a tree will fall on them. By moving around in a particular way, they are able to more easily avoid a tree if it should pick that moment to fall. This, it turns out, is an entirely reasonable fear. As rare as it is for a tree to fall on you, when you spend your entire life living in the woods it turns out that you will on the average have to dodge two or three gigantic trees falling right on top of you in a five decade active lifetime.
Comments on this entry are closed.