| on Dec 29, 2007, 01:51 PM E.S.T.
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An historical approach detailing how over the last thirty years scientists have begun to intermingle scientific and political claims.
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. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy.
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. Read the rest...
About the author:
 Michael Crichton is the best-selling author of State
of Fear, which takes the reader from the glaciers of Iceland to the volcanoes
of Antarctica, from the Arizona desert to the deadly jungles of the
Solomon Islands, from the streets of Paris to the beaches of Los
Angeles. The novel races forward on a roller-coaster thrill ride, all
the while keeping the brain in high gear. Gripping and thought
provoking, State of Fear is Michael Crichton at his very best.
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