Posted on 01/03/2004 8:45:36 AM PST by Benrand
Aliens Cause Global Warming
A long read, but filled with interesting anecdotes from people like Feynman and Teller. I must say, he sounds pretty conservative.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at crichton-official.com ...
Dr. Ignatz Semmelweiss, to be precise. There is a biography of his efforts to prove that the unsanitary conditions of 19th. Century hospitals were the major cause of women's death after giving birth with a physician in attendance (hence the preference for mid-wives). This was especially so, if the hospital was part of a medical university. For those so interested, it is a good read.
I remember this well. Sagan also predicted it would take years to extinguish the oil fires set by a retreating Iraqi army. The Texan oil well fire fighters had the wells extinguished in six months.
I liked Carl Sagan. He began by making science elegant and beautiful to the common folk. He went too far when he went political and started to believe his own press releases.
It doesn't make sense any way you write it.
Ha!
Excelent! Well resoned, thoughtful, insiteful and damn near irrefutable!
He must be silenced!!!!
But he obviously used his position to perpetrate fraud and that is unacceptable. I wish he were here to debate Crichton.
BILLions and BILLions...I learned what a googol plex was from him and stunned my 5th grade math teacher by bringng it up in class. :o)
Not that I would that far, however, if I am stuck in a room with smokers, my eyes burn, my throat dries up, my sinuses get clogged and eventually I will start to continuously cough.
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.
They would need to study politicians first. Try to determine what turns 98% of them into worthless dregs who feed off of their constituents instead of serve them as they are supposed to.
Hi! :-)
I ended up on both a TLC and Discovery channel program on astronomy and SETI that featured Carl Sagan as well. :-)
So do I.
Granted, Drake's Equation:
N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fLcannot be tested in the classic sense with the current state of technology - beyond what the SETI project is doing now, a pop science sampling of a narrow band of the sky for signals. And yes, setting some of the variables is a leap of faith. However, as a statement of probability and a yardstick for progress in our exploration Drake's Equation has value. Value for making public policy? No, I agree with that aspect of Crichton's argument.
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.
But consider - hasn't the count of "dark matter" in the universe dramatically increased in the last decade? Haven't we moved from bring the only solar system with planets to a proven fact that other stars have planets? (Thank you Hubble Telescope) We have seen progress on the accurate setting of the variables N and fp. There IS progress being made and as time goes on, hard science AND pop science like SETI will continue to fill in the blanks.
The Drake Equation also reminds me of the Statistics 101 exercise of calculating the probability that two or more students in a classroom share the same birthday. You solve the problem by calculating the probability that NO student has the same birthday. When you look at it in that light - with each additional student the number of available dates that don't already have a hit decreases - Drake's Equation looks better and better. We are getting a handle on the number of stars with planets, something that wansn't possible when Drake developed the equation. As that number grows, then the chances that NONE of the planets has life and that NO other species has the intelligence to communicate [or the superior intelligence NOT to communicate :) ] diminishes.
Meanwhile, I see no harm in running a SETI process in the background of my computer. If I can interest my child in thinking beyond the bounds of the home planet, THAT has value to me.
Carl Sagan "smoked marijuana regularly, convinced it enhanced his scientific insight," noted The Washington Post in a review of the book Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos.
In books by Keay Davidson ''Carl Sagan: A Life'', and William Poundstone, ''Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos'' delight was taken in the discovery that Sagan smoked bales of marijuana and attributed to the weed vital moments of intellectual inspiration.
Intellectual inspiration?
"I had a dream today, oh boy ...... The Engish Army had just won the war" .......
Me either, since I "do" SETI with an actual radio telescope with antennas more than 1000 miles apart.
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