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Subject: ALIENS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING - SERIOUSLY!
RockyMTNClimber    6/21/2007 12:30:31 PM
This is to put a final nail in the coffin of global warming. Man can not change the earth's tempurature. No evidence has ever or will ever compell science to say that. This is a silly notion played for political and religious resons. Below is a well thought out essay that everyone who believes in global warming, leprichans, and the stork that delivers babies should read. Check Six Rocky "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 a very 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=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. 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 involv
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Very sorry for the copy-right infringement. I promise to never do it again.   6/21/2007 12:34:51 PM
And sorry for the length of the essay. It is a long read but it is worth it.
 
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Herc the Merc    LOL Rocky- u hit the spot-refreshing   6/21/2007 12:35:44 PM
How about this one-->> Solution to global warming is---air conditioning. Haha.
 
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Panther       6/21/2007 2:37:36 PM
It is a pity how politicized science has become. I used too respect them and hold their findings in high regard. But, now that they are turning into a bunch of absolutists, makes me wonder who will be the next Galileo Galilei of their bunch... i.e. which one of them will  be made too commit suicide for his belief's.
 
Strange isn't it, once it was religon who opposed the many differing views posed by science. Now it's the scientists themseleves who are slowly becoming the persecutors of themseleves!
 
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andyf       6/21/2007 3:06:27 PM
well I dont know how reliable the science is,,, but we keep having 'warmest month sinces'
we had 23 c in April
were getting torrential rains now.
the seasons are broken
something is happening
 
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Jeff_F_F    Quantifiable consequences   6/21/2007 3:20:36 PM
The problem is that the scientific process is too slow and cumbersome. Today we are dealing with such important issues that we can't take the time to follow it verbatim. Hard core science would say we need to collect data, form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis and draw a conclusion. Oh and let's not forget publish, because that's the money step, the step that ensures we'll be able to continue our scientific careers and living off of grant money from governments, NGOs and philantropy. Todays important issues cover very complex topics, areas where actually testing a hypothesis may take years if not decades. So it seems reasonable just to skip that step and go straight to publication, right?
 
Usually it is impossible to quantify the consequences lousy science. One exception is the area of trans fat. Decades ago a correlation was drawn between saturated fat and heart disease. As a result diet experts assumed that switching to substitutes based on unsaturated fat would reduce heart disease. Unfortunately most of these substitutes used the process of hydrogenation to simulate the physical properties of saturated fat in an unsaturated fat. Was trans fat better for you than saturated fat? No one really knew, but as mentioned above we were dealing with very important issues as fundamental as people's lives, and testing the hypothesis would take years of complex and expensive population studies, so it would be okay to skip that step and go straight to publication right? Unfortunately heart disease rates didn't improve after people started changing their diets. In fact they got worse. At first the diet experts thought the solution was more education, pushing the message harder so that more people would switch from traditional foods high in saturated fat such as lard and butter to hydrogenated substitutes like margarine and shortning. Groups like Science in the Public Intrest even targeted companies like McDonalds to force them to adopt the new foods. None of this helped the situation and heart disease continued to increase.
 
After awhile actual studies were done. Unfortunately the results were clear. Hydrogenated oils do not reduce heart disease risk. In fact they dramatically increase it. Estimates from studies in rats suggest that 5 grams of Hydrogenated oil--also known as trans fat--per day appears to increase heart disease risk by 25%.
 
We don't know how many million people were killed by this lousy science. What we do know is that the scientists who committed this attrocity and the organizations such as Science in the Public Intrest that participated in it have suffered no consequences. They have lost no credibility. When they make statements to the press there is not editorial note that they previously recommended eating trans fat.
 
The same goes for climate scientists. Many of the climate scientists who are currently predicting out of control global warming caused by human polution were predicting an out of control spiral into a new ice age in the 70s, since global temperatures back then were falling dramatically. They thought the temperature drop was caused by human polution of course. Some are still trying to salvage this theory by claiming that global warming will trigger a new ice age. Let's face it, science is a lot more fun when you don't actually have to test anything in the real world.
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Global Warming in the Rocky Mountains   6/21/2007 3:52:10 PM

well I dont know how reliable the science is,,, but we keep having 'warmest month sinces'

we had 23 c in April

were getting torrential rains now.

the seasons are broken

something is happening

 
We just had a vicious winter here in Colorado. Cold and snow beyond anything I have personally seen. The local TV weather guessers said it was the most difficult in history (right between stories about global warming). The funny thing is the old timers here in my county say that 1948 was truely the most brutal from their perspective. 20+ foot deep snowdrifts that wiped out their herds and killed allot of their friends too. If you check the data where it was collected in Denver however it was average.
 
 
To say that the data does not lead you to conclude anything scientific and the scientists do not have a clue remains a monumental understatement. Certainly there is nothing that leads us to a conclusion that we need to stop using SUV's and start rationing resources.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky

 
 
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Softwar       6/21/2007 3:57:49 PM
You can't save the Earth unless you are willing to make other people sacrifice.
 
Dogbert - The Green Consultant
 
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Jeff_F_F    Quantifiable uncertainty   6/21/2007 4:03:12 PM
So what about the scientists that say the output of the sun is increasing? Might that impact the situation?
 
Maybe it is just a coincidence that Mars is getting hotter too... Of course that is being blamed on increasing sand and dust storm activity which is thought to be increasing Mars' albido by man-made climate change activists.
 
I have to wonder though, if global warming on Earth is increasing storm activity, wouldn't it make sense that it is on Mars as well? Storm activity is related to atmospheric convection meaning that as the surface temperature gets hotter (whether because of more CO2 or because there is more sunlight hitting the surface) convection increases in an effort to help radiate that heat into space. On Earth that would mean more hurricanes and such, on Mars it would mean more dust storms, which is what we are seeing.
 
Maybe it is just a coincidence that we are having some of the most intense sunspot activity on record, while a few hundred years ago an astronomer wrote that he was really excited when he saw a sunspot because even thought they had been written about by other astronomers, there had never been a sunspot seen during his lifetime he had thought he might dies without ever seeing one. Interestingly this observation roughly corresponds to the time period we call the Little Ice Age.
 
But that's just a coincidence. How do we know? Because Gore says climate change is caused by humans poluting the earth with CO2. So all of the other possible explanations have to be coincidences.
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Talk about a data void!   6/21/2007 4:20:18 PM
Maybe it is just a coincidence that Mars is getting hotter too...
 
Thank you for pointing that out! I forgot that there are some scientists saying that Mars is getting warmer in spite of the fact that we have no expertise in predicting or tracking surface temperatures or conditions on Mars. A few landers and a handful of orbiters do not a data base make....
 
Someone might ask these people to go back to school and learn what the word quantify means.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
 
 
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anuts       6/21/2007 4:27:27 PM

Maybe it is just a coincidence that Mars is getting hotter too...

 

Thank you for pointing that out! I forgot that there are some scientists saying that Mars is getting warmer in spite of the fact that we have no expertise in predicting or tracking surface temperatures or conditions on Mars. A few landers and a handful of orbiters do not a data base make....

 

Someone might ask these people to go back to school and learn what the word quantify means.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

 

 



Even so. Wonder what that says about us humans being the cause. Humans on Mars, too?
 
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