Aliens Cause Global Warming

[JacksonDean]

Whichever side of the issue you're on, if you're reasonable and intelligent, you have to admit he makes some excellent points.

http://michaelcrichton.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

[JACKS0NESP]

there is no way I could read all of that @ school, but what if? :P

[Axewielder]

He fails, this is why:

- SETI is hardly a religion based on no evidence whatsoever. The fact that there is life on Earth is a strong indication that there is life elsewhere.

- Failures of the scientific community that happened in the 1920's cannot be used to debase scientific theories in the present age. Modern science is right more than it is wrong, so does a punch list of every unrelated error over the past 100 years prove or disprove anything conclusively? No.

- It is actually easier to model weather patterns on a global scale than a local scale. Therefore, you cannot use the inaccuracies of the local weather forecasts as a gauge of the global forecast accuracy.

[Spivonious]

His point is that science without hard, verifiable evidence is not science at all. Therefore, SETI isn't science (no contact with aliens in 40 years), nuclear winter isn't science (Sagan's predictions never came true), second-hand smoke isn't science (studies rated it too low of a risk to be regulated by the EPA), and global warming isn't science (no evidence that humans have caused climate change). Whenever science gets mixed up in politics, nothing good can happen.

Fantastic essay, by the way.