“Michael Crichton is not a scientist”

CRICHTON, (John) Michael. American. Born in Chicago, Illinois, October 23, 1942. Educated at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1964 (Phi Beta Kappa). Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellow, 1964-65. Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. Graduated Harvard Medical School, M.D. 1969; post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California 1969-1970. Visiting Writer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988.

The Biological Sciences post-doctoral work probably makes Mike a scientist….. (See almost any Deparment of Biological Sciences)

“never been wiped out, means we never will be”

When you make an analogy to something I said, please make sure it follows in common sense logic. The truth is that few groups outside of cool aid drinkers have ever had a sure fire doomsday equation. I never said we couldn’t be wiped out, the possible reasons for such a catastrophe are seemingly limitless, few having anything to do with our actions (or inactions) regarding the weather. The point is that Doomsday Chicken Littles have always been wrong, it does not necessarily follow that every single one will be, but the probability of Al Gore (now he’s really not a scientist) being correct is highly unlikely. Doomsday gurus also offer no solutions. Remember, when you are famous for saying (as in The Population Bomb) that the planet is going to be over run by skyrocketing birth rates, there is little incentive to see your prophecy fail. Birth Rates were already declining in countries (save a few) because if all of kids survive, you’ll have fewer kids. This is the example of critical thinking….not linear thinking (Better Medicine->Longer life span and fewer infant fatalities->Oh Sweet Jesus the planet is overun with modern apes!) Linear thinking is really not thinking at all but a straight shot guess at an outcome. If my TV doesn’t turn on when I push power, it could be 1)Power out to the house 2)TV not plugged in 3)I’m not pushing the button hard enough 4)The button is broken 5)Someone is sitting on the remote control, keeping it off 6)The entire television is busted 7)The cable box it is plugged into isn’t on or plugged in, etc… I only implore people to use critical thinking, like I have for one level of the “What’s broke” game. Each point could be extrapolated to many higher levels of questions and the result could be some 10 questions later like “A squirrel nested in a High Voltage Transformer and caused a fire and local brownout.”

you said
“i think one of the theories is that as the polar ice melts, it will accelerate itself by causing pools of melted water to form in the resulting crevasses, and that after this happens there wont be any way to reverse it, because it would be impossible to contain the ice. that might not be a completely satisfactory answer, i need to do more research.”

You’re right, do more research….. The most scientific word you have in the above paragraph is “theory”. I am not saying to throw out AlGore’s theories, but to examine them, criticize them (as ALL theories are). Also, just an idea, come up with new theories…..amazing. In no way am I saying that the above is wrong or right….just that it is what it is….a theory. No different than my theories. (I didn’t even read those in a book, just made them up) And hopefully, some courageous souls out there will put forward even more theories, either built on AlGores Scientific Powerhouse or staunchly contending against it. The more ideas the better….that is how things get invented. By the way there is a reason why climatologists are bound to call their ideas theories vice laws (See Sir Isaac Newton, etc..) Laws have a very rigorous passage in the scientific congress, for a very good reason. I am not a hater or a doubter, I don’t want people to go back to sleep, but rather back to school. Michael Faraday (Faraday’s Law regarding electricity generation) had to repeat every single experiment that he chose to have some faith in. Was he calling every scientist a liar? No. He was smart, and scientists today should follow his example.

you said…
“that article is available here, and is quite interesting: http://ccr.meteor.wisc.edu/News/0305046.pdf”

Read it, kind of liked the hypothesis(still, skeptic). No research is complete without a strong rebuttal however….see specific criticism of your article(theory)

http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/broecker06eos.pdf

Also, go back to your article. Look at the way, way bottom. You will notice words (in the suggested book titles) like:

Plagues
Germs
Fates
Crisis

very scary…..I don’t believe in the boogey man….the world is okay and you are too!

Pete

this is equivalent to saying that since humanity has never been wiped out, we never will be. i think this is a logical fallacy. there is no set date by which global warming will cause catastrophe (compared to people who thought the apocalypse was coming in 2000, etc).

micheal crichton is not a scientist.

“or More heat could just beget more heat, but by which mechanism? ”

i think one of the theories is that as the polar ice melts, it will accelerate itself by causing pools of melted water to form in the resulting crevasses, and that after this happens there wont be any way to reverse it, because it would be impossible to contain the ice. that might not be a completely satisfactory answer, i need to do more research.

“Has the earth heated before? Yes, and it has cooled as well. One question about the change in surface temperature is our contribution towards the change, not whether it is happening. The other question is what cycle the earth SHOULD be on right now. That is to say, if cooling/warming is cyclic, then how cyclic?”

the earth is warming much faster than it should be naturally. i read an article a while ago that put forth a theory that humans started affecting climate significantly when we started cutting down trees for agriculture about 5000 years ago. it said that we would have likely had a small ice age if we hadnt done this. the article also compared carbon levels in periods of intense human death (such as the plague in europe, which if i remember correctly killed about 1/3 of some populations, and the american genocide in which europeans caused the death of 90% of the natives). this caused trees to grow back and there was a very strong corresponding drop in carbon dioxide.

that article is available here, and is quite interesting: http://ccr.meteor.wisc.edu/News/0305046.pdf

it goes into warming/cooling cycles also.

Is space cold? It’s neither. Objects are either heated by some process or radiate all of their heat away(See heat fluctations on the moons surface).

Has the earth heated before? Yes, and it has cooled as well. One question about the change in surface temperature is our contribution towards the change, not whether it is happening. The other question is what cycle the earth SHOULD be on right now. That is to say, if cooling/warming is cyclic, then how cyclic? Then project where we should be now, and compare that to actual results. If the earth is supposed to be in a cooling cycle, then we really do have a HUGE impact on the surface temperature. If we are already in a warming cycle, then we can discover our own contribution. The truth seems to be right now that it is impossible, with todays technology, to reference far enough back to see these swings. I would be interested in the results from a life cycle point of view as well. Are the swings longer or shorter in duration? What were the actual temperature swings? Most importantly, if the duration of swings is getting longer, what effect will that have ultimately on our ability to grow food and such. I feel for the environmental movement, but it is no religion to me. My Engineering degree precludes me from feeling any which way about what 2 2 means, I just strictly care about the answer. From the answer(Our Contribution) we can figure out what IMMEDIATE action is NECESSARY. Having worked as an operator at a nuclear plant, I know through training and practical experience that there is no casualty whereby you have to act so quickly as not to think. This post is not intended to spur more bickering, but actual thought, like:

More Heat could mean More Clouds(increased evaporation) thereby more reflection of the sun’s light thereby Global Surface Cooling.

or

More Heat could mean More Deserts which due to there light color actually reflect more of the sun’s rays back into space(yes, trees and rooftops and oceans absorb an incredible amount of the sun’s energy, leaving it here in our atmosphere) which would lead to Global cooling.

or More heat could just beget more heat, but by which mechanism? More heat is not just going to melt ice caps and create deserts, our atmosphere would have to be affected and then what would that mean?

I don’t have all of the answers, but I am hoping for well funded SCIENTISTS(I don’t give a flip who gave them the money, as long as they think like scientists should, critical of every notion and theory). Issues like this are too important to waste time and energy hating oil companies for. No one weeps for the dear, departed whale oil companies that will never come back, these jokers will suffer the same fate some day. READ MICHAEL CRICHTON’S take on the issue of Environmental Religion and Complex versus Linear Thinking on www.michaelcrichton.com He is apolotical about it because that is the way to approach it without sounding like Chicken Little(which Gore does). Every doomsday Cultist has been faced with humiliation when the prediction turned out to be false. So you either just say “Well, since we made the changes I said, we’re money now” OR you make the mommies and kiddies drink the cyanide cool aid, either way you “win”. The human race is already decarbonizing……uhhh…we don’t all burn wood, or coal, or even just straight crude. Natural gas (CH4) is prevalent for good reason (4 Hydrogen atoms-GOOD, 1 Carbon-bad). Compare its composition to wood, and you will being to see the trend that leads to the use of straight Hydrogen as fuel…for pretty much everything. I have the gift of optimism and the wisdom of history to know that we’re not so bad after all and that I didn’t fill my tank up with Whale oil this morning….

http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

It is almost comical to listen to their alternative theories to global warming and some fo the claims they make. Here are a couple:

“Global climate cycles of warming and cooling have been a natural phenomena for hundreds of thousands of years, and it is unlikely that these cycles of dramatic climate change will stop anytime soon. We currently enjoy a warm Earth. Can we count on a warm Earth forever? The answer is most likely… no.

Since the climate has always been changing and will likely continue of it’s own accord to change in the future, instead of crippling the U.S. economy in order to achieve small reductions in global warming effects due to manmade additions to atmospheric carbon dioxide, our resources may be better spent making preparations to adapt to global cooling and global warming, and the inevitable consequences of fluctuating ocean levels, temperatures, and precipitation that accompany climatic change.”

And this one:

“CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life– plants and animals alike– benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide.”

“If we are in a global warming crisis today, even the most aggressive and costly proposals for limiting industrial carbon dioxide emissions would have a negligible effect on global climate!”