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Date: 2 Mar 2006 22:20:44 -0000
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Subject: [Prehistoric Archaeology] Digest Number 354
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      1. Fwd: the globe is not warming
           From: "Tamara" <[log in to unmask]>


________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20
   Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 13:47:05 -0000
   From: "Tamara" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Fwd: the globe is not warming

The title is tongue-in-cheek:

http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.htm

"Aliens Cause Global Warming"

A lecture by Michael Crichton
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA
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 avery 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=3DN*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 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. 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 =3D Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe=E2=80=A6 etc

(The amount of tropospheric dust=3D# warheads x size warheads x warhead
detonation height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x
Particles entering the Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle
endurance=E2=80=A6and so on.)

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.

And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded
that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no
estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not
only made those estimates, but concluded they were catastrophic.

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.

The real nature of the conference is indicated by these artists'
renderings of the the effect of nuclear winter.

I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a
tranquil scene in the north woods. A beaver has just completed its
dam, two black bears forage for food, a swallow-tailed butterfly
flutters in the foreground, a loon swims quietly by, and a kingfisher
searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if ever there was.

At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich
was reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted
as saying nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons
were growing the next year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these
findings now?

Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust.
Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot
imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of
science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd
statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here,
however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists=E2=
=80=A6"

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the
rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus
science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be
stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has
been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by
claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the
consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your
wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with
consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the
contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right,
which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by
reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What
is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in
history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

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.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus
is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following
childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander
Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious
processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In
1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious,
and presented compellng evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849,
Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated
puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said
he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was
in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the
twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five
years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the
prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and
ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens
of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called
pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what
was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked
a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the
cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The
consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated
that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that
the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra
patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers
swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed
capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called
"Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The
consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a
social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the
cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They
continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth
century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem
to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912,
that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered
at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously
denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem
as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus
fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner
and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine,
repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement
therap6y=E2=80=A6the list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is
invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is
not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that
E=3Dmc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles
away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

But back to our main subject.

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=E2=80=A6who wants to be accused o=
f
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.

At the time, there was a concerted desire on the part of lots of
people to avoid nuclear war. If nuclear winter looked awful, why
investigate too closely? Who wanted to disagree? Only people like
Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb."

Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still
uncertain and deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has
taken the position that the whole scenario is so robust that there can
be little doubt about its main conclusions." Yet for most people, the
fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did
not seem to be relevant.

I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what
science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press
conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will
get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you
get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is
always there, if you subvert science to political ends.

That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line
between what science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be
drawn clearly-and defended.

What happened to Nuclear Winter? As the media glare faded, its robust
scenario appeared less persuasive; John Maddox, editor of Nature,
repeatedly criticized its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider,
one of the leading figures in the climate model, began to speak of
"nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same ring.

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.

What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe
the lesson was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and
an aggressive media campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the
science, and in short order, a terminally weak thesis will be
established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes beside the
point. The war is already over without a shot being fired. That was
the lesson, and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with
second hand smoke.

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for
approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking
adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of
thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven
studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive,
and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of
1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action
by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine,
for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association
at the 95% confidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They
then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans
on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned
public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the
Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the
nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American
Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of
second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had
"committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had
"disregarded information and made findings on selective information."
The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our
science=E2=80=A6.there's wide agreement. The American people certainly
recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings=E2=80=A6a whole host of
health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps
science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that
Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A
large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have
well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read,
for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At
this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand
smoke.

As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most
people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't
want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning
second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of
RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a
social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've
given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told
them that cheating is the way to succeed.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard
scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part
this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific
profession; in part because of the lack of good science education
among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy
groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and
shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media
as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American
media is dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions
like the New York Times can no longer differentiate between factual
content and editorial opinion, but rather mix both freely on their
front page, then who will hold anyone to a higher standard?

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or
non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we
arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash
the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world.
I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these
things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in
the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support
the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron.
Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the
program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and
"skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect
motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply
anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though
prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.

When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic
require quotation marks around it?

To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming
controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back
in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add
weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a
computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as
generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well
they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide
the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are,
when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data
about the year 2100. There are only model runs.

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.

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're
asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future?
And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody
lost their minds?

Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the modelmakers is
breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say
they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is
sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more
to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can
never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred
years from now is simply absurd.

Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be
profitable in 2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was
so crazy that it must be a scam?

Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried
about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where
would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the
horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it
would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for
sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy
source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and
Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900.
Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't
know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an
airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone,
or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM,
IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant
replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy,
gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac,
leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic
explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction,
superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step,
ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser
surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS=E2=80=A6
None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900.
They wouldn't know what you are talking about.

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even
worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the
future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's
thought knows it.

I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we
have already had an example of dire predictions set aside by new
technology. I refer to the green revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich
said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world
will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to
starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people
would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass
starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it
isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to
reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate
modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today,
some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling.
But nobody knows for sure.

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."

What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have
become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if
not impossible, to separate them out. It is possible for an outside
observer to ask serious questions about the conduct of investigations
into global warming, such as whether we are taking appropriate steps
to improve the quality of our observational data records, whether we
are systematically obtaining the information that will clarify
existing uncertainties, whether we have any organized disinterested
mechanism to direct research in this contentious area.

The answer to all these questions is no. We don't.

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.

And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will
propose one.

Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to
determine drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in
other policy areas as well. Certainly the increased use of computer
models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make
the models from those who verify them. The fact is that the present
structure of science is entrepeneurial, with individual investigative
teams vying for funding from organizations which all too often have a
clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be
just as bad. This is not healthy for science.

Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in
this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by
private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be
pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The
institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular
area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement:
teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many
cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and
those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address
the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our
way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in
global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this.

I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may
be saying, well what is the big deal, really. So we made a few
mistakes. So a few scientists have overstated their cases and have egg
on their faces. So what.

Well, I'll tell you.

In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims
about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw
power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity
that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better
than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and
they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are
correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a
Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The
Skeptical Environmentalist.

The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described
as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had
no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher,
Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor
should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun
the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge
could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have
passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer
review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and
all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking
a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists?

Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed
intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about
power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven
pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their
assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a
poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing
him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends
itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to
defend itself? Is this what we have come to?

When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a
page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics'
essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific
American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages
down.

Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is
charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to
substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't
matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal
terms. He's a heretic.

Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just
never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother
church.

Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will
become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to
aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler,
former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that
"Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of
science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not
unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the
difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't
worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.

Thank you very much.

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