2003, Michael Crichton: Aliens Cause Global Warming: A Caltech Lecture by Michael Crichton
"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.
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........
Within a few years we’ll have another big hurricane year, and the global warming folks will have something else to chatter about.
Genius. Greenfield is a genius.
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.
I say it’s Keebler Elves.
Most interesting the the reporting on EL NINO. When it looks like EL NIno is going one way, people claim it is proof of their climate agenda. But when it looks like EL NINO is going the other direction, they then say that EL NINO has nothing to do with climate change and is just a local phenomenon.
maybe its chemtrails. :)
Hahahaha!
But, but I’ve still got my NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC with the big picture on the cover of Katrina trashing New Orleans, and the warning we better get ready for LOTS MORE SUPERSTORMS in the future unless we STOP GLO-BULL WARMING NOW!
That was nine years ago.
Liberal progressives are such an entertaining lot. They berate you for not obeying their “science” but then attribute the current climate condition to “Luck” instead off the actual science. Same with homosexuality...constantly commanding that gays are “Born this way” and that science “supports this!” Great...lets see how they handle this...tell them we will start a campaign to allow couples to selectively abort gay fetus’s and immediately two things will happen...1...the gays themselves will have to admit there is not basis in fact supporting “Born this way” narrative and abortion supporters will have to say “Its a Human Being” IF they really want to believe the “scientific evidence” proving gayness.
Liberal progressives....Gold Medalists in Mental Gymnastics!
bump
Science has also been seduced by federal grant money. We pay hard-earned money for pseudo-science.
Wouldn’t a more honest answer be, “We don’t know. It is beyond our current level of knowledge.”
And isn’t that the honest answer to the mysteries of climate change.
Joe Bastardi would tear those fools a new one.
Not luck. The natural fluctuation of the frequency of weather phenomena. Nature is not obliged to give us the number of storms that we say is normal.