Aliens Cause Global Warming (MUST READ)

crichton-official.com ^ | January 17, 2003 | Michael Crichton

[Bernard Marx]

Cogitator, care to try a rebuttal of this piece? I doubt you can do it but I'd be interested in your specific response.

[yankeedame]

When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?

About the same time "discriminating/discrimination" and "prejudice" became dirty words.

[RadioAstronomer]

I thought he did the right thing and died.

You are truly glad he is dead? What did he ever do to you???

I was interviewed on both TLC and Dicovery channel astronomy and SETI shows that also featured Dr. Sagan.

[RadioAstronomer]

SETI is unquestionably a religion.

Codswallop! Crichton is pontificating here!

[RadioAstronomer]

care to try a rebuttal of this piece?

I can and will. However, I need to get home from the lab first.

Will later this evening.

Physicist, will you give it a go as well please?

[Graybeard58]

You are truly glad he is dead?

Is that what you read into my statement?

You must be one of them thar scientests referred to in the article.

[FierceDraka]

Yeah. Great article.

I'm not really a fan of Chrichton's fiction, but his essays are spot-on.

[cyborg]

Carl Sagan is like broccoli sprouts, love him or hate him apparently.

[Publius6961]

BUMP!

[ASA Vet]

SETI is unquestionably a religion.

Religions require a belief in the supernatural.
I see no such requirement in SETI research.

[agincourt1415]

BTT for reading later

[TomB]

bump

[nuke rocketeer]

What disturbs me most about the global warming crowd is their emphasis on the results of their computer models. I build computer models of power plants to predict performance and extrapolate the results for upgrading equipment and uprating the power levels. First, you build the model using the design parameters for the equipment in the plant and reproduce the design predictions. The very next thing you do after building the model is "tune" it to current performance. That is, you tweak the equipment design parameters to match the measured parameters in the plant. It is really important that these measurements be accurate and repeatable. Ignoring a measurement that is good but tells you something you do not want to hear is a recipe for failure. After you have tweaked the model to reproduce the results of one set of data, you check it out by putting a new set of boundary variables from another set of data and see how it predicts the rest of the data. For a power plant the boundary variables are feed water flow, cycle heat input from the boiler (or reactor), steam pressure/temperature, and cooling water flow/temperature. The model should predict plant output within 0.5 to 1.0 megawatts (out of 500 to 1300 megawatts) and various cycle parameters within 2%. A properly tuned model can do this day in and day out and is a handy tool for finding performance problems. It to can also extrapolate accurately to predict what will happen if you want to change the cycle.

No that I have explained what a proper computer model can do, let's examine how well the various climate models predict current climate and weather. As of now, there is NO computer model that can accurately predict the weather variables at any location more than 12 hours in advance. The huge chaotic energy inputs the sun and the earth's core, the chaotic movements of the Earth's atmosphere, and the poorly understood chemical interactions of the atmosphere and the oceans makes for a staggering number of simultaneous calculations. NOAA takes in hundreds of meteorological measurements a day from all over the world and from several satellites and feeds them into a computer that uses all the capacity of one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Try as they might, the scientists at NOAA still cannot predict accurately the weather accurately more than 12 hours in advance. Similar programs are used to extrapolate the climate years and decades into the future when they cannot tell us accurately what the general climate will be in the next season. Just look at the predictions made for the number of hurricanes, the severity of the upcoming winters, summers, etc.

These same Cassandras tell us that global average temperatures have risen 0.5 degrees over the last 30 years, based on satellite temperature measurements and selected ground based measurements. I work with the best available temperature measurements and cannot get that kind of accuracy with any certainty. The uncertainty of the best measurements are usually plus/minus 0.5 degrees. I have heard, but cannot verify, that many measurements that do not support their preconceived theories are thrown out. It would fit with the general propaganda that Sagan, Erlich, et al have been throwing out at us for 30 years. I have always looked for, but have not seen, their FULL set of data along with the averages, standard deviations, and uncertainties of the measurements. All I get are the press releases showing the temperature rise and breathless statements on how we westerners are responsible for the upcoming disaster. I would bet that the uncertainty of these measurements is greater than the results that we are being bombarded with. What this means is that the temperature rise they point to is more likely no rise at all. It is merely just a statistical fluctuation.

[PatrickHenry]

If you return to this thread, please ping me when you post.

[Carry_Okie]

Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country.

Darned stupid idea.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

50und=PT*,fa*,0wT,2,m|e^

The Equation of the pretty far out to me theory.

[AuntB]

BTT

[Cameronite]

I used to be an avid reader of Scientific American, but it's turned into such a biased rag I can't stand it any more. I still buy one once a year or so to see if it has improved any, but I always end up wising it were printed on softer paper so it could be put to a more appropriate use.

[DuncanWaring]

Your point?

[Carry_Okie]

I used to be an avid reader of Scientific American, but it's turned into such a biased rag I can't stand it any more.

Nature is just as bad.