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(Excerpted from State of Fear)

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort.

All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.

The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful --- and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing --- that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well know to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated.

The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race.

The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded --- Jews were agreed to be largely feeble-minded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks --- and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization.

As Margaret Sanger said, "Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty ... there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste."

Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said tha

If you believe that "Environmentalism is not like Palinism" I suggest you read the link at the end. "The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not." - Eric Hoffer. The same applies to AGW zealots, deniers and the few scientists out there who are more interested in science than self promotion.

Many environmentalists did predict global cooling in the sixties and seventies. The information may not be as available online as more recent claims, but I recall as a child numerous predictions of a coming ice age. More recently, in 1991, Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

Aliens Cause Global Warming by Michael Crichton:

"This serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice."

Alien's cause global warming: http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

I have NEVER seen an accurate newspaper article on a subject I was conversant in. Not once. Which leads me to believe they're equally worthless on subjects I'm not conversant in as well.

Michael Crichton says something similar (though you have shown yourself to be an exception) in his speech Why Speculate ?.

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

"In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

"That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.

"But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia."

Michael Crichton was great author, but also a scientist. He was one of few people who warned about the the dangerous trend of mixing politics into science, especially in regards to global warming.
His Aliens Caused Global Warming speech is a must read.

I believe the speech you are referring to is http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/books-next-history.html

Michael Crichton's Next: An interesting look at the problems with law and genetics. Worth a read if you are interested in the topic area

The Peak Oil Theory is another pointless discussion. It's like discussion on 'Peak Diamonds'. Have we reached the diamond peak? If we have and we run out of diamonds, how are future young couples going to get engaged and married? Oh, they are doubling the retail price of diamonds, I can understand that, they are past "peak" production.

As a parent I try and teach my children to share their toys, not waste their supplies, to save some of their candy for another day and to clean up after themselves. These aren't hard concepts to grasp, even for a 3 year old.

I think as individuals we are born with a sense that we should "Take what ya' need and you leave the rest" as Robbie Robertson put it.
End of discussion.

Michael is a gifted writer. However this needs to be see in a light that includes :

(1) he has a new book out about it, so this is prolly a junket piece
(2) he wrote "State of Fear" as a novel and further believes it reflects a sensible attitude
(3) he wrote this: http://www.michaelcrichton.net/features/spoonbendi ng.html and believes it.

Interestingly according to WHO, there were 4000+ SARS cases, 252 died, 2000+ recovered, apparently ~1500 fell off the planet.

I do not agree. Scientists, by the very nature of the vocation, MUST be deemed "well behaved". Or their jobs disappear, they cannot get grants to fund their research, cannot publish, and can easily wind up without a "Scientist's Job". [Teaching at a good school, Research, publication (to popular, welll paid venues), etc..]

Which, of course, holds a certain amount of FEAR for them ! So Scientists will not usually "Openly Oppose" the "Status Quo" on POLITICALLY CHARGED topics. Specifically because of this ostracizing.

So there are quite a few scientists who would disagree with the some of the methods used by the "Global Warming Cadre" and some of their results, but they DARE NOT express an opposing opinion.
[See: "Testimony of Michael Crichton before the United States Senate" on this page: http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speeches/index.html ]

Actors should be reminded that, just because they've played a doctor, doesn't make them one.

I'm not the global warming denial zealot you speak of, but I am certainly suspicious of any group that regards consensus as truth, and ridicules anyone that tries to present scientific contrary arguments. (Note that I do not regard Intelligent Design as a rational, scientific counter argument to evolution).

Coincidentally, I was reading a few speeches my Michael Crichton earlier today on his website http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speeches/index.html , and whether or not you agree with his conclusions about global warming and environmentalism in general, his message is important to keep in mind no matter what your conclusions are: Sloppy and/or biased science is bad science. And there's lots of it on either side of the global warming issue.

There is no such thing as "scientific concensus".

Yeah, but if the BBC covered that like they covered climate change they'd say "the overwhelming consensus is that the old theory is mostly correct, and can be fixed with a few minor changes. Only a small minority of scientists believe in so called quantum theory, which is a much more radical revision"

Not that it would matter a jot, since that doesn't have any public policy implications. A better example, as Michael Crichton pointed out, would be the consensus on eugenics or Lysenkoism, which was used to justify some very evil actions. Planned economies had consensus support at the start of the 20th Century, and they turned out to be a disaster too. Millions of people died in each case incidentally, so the stakes are pretty high here. Actually, even if absolutely no one dies because of alarmism about the environment, we've still lost something intellectually as a species, as he points out with his comments about the way Scientific American treated Bjorn Lomborg.

In fact it's worth quoting his comments on that.

Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?

When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down.

Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.

Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.


Ouch.

The point is that you have a complicated subject, and most of the media, including the BBC and Scientific American covers it as "If we don't take drastic action, the planet is doomed, only a few people have been paid by Big Oil to question this truth", which is a gross oversimplification. It's also kind of suspicious that imminent climate collapse is being used to justify the same sort of statist policies that BBC style leftwingers used to support for different reasons before socialism self destructed. I don't trust people who find a new justification for their highly questionable policy ideas when the old one becomes untenable or unfashionable.

And looking at the details, like Lomborg did, there's all sorts of stuff wrong with this. Implementing Kyoto would be expensive, and yet it's actually not really enough to dent CO2 emissions. And the countries likely to increase their emissions most are actually exempt. Once again, it's a climate change based way to implement the kind of redistributive policie, especially from the US to the rest of the world that left wingers have been arguing for unsuccessfully for ages.

And finally, there's something implicitly totalitarian about the idea that we know the absolute truth, and the only reason we can't take the necessary action is because of fools and dupes of big business are questioning it. This is the sort of mentality that leads, if not to the gulag, to a much less democratic system implementing disasterous policies against the wishes of the population. Like the UN or the EU in fact.

So relying on the consensus is unreliable, and using the scientific consensus to justify radically altering the world economy is the road to serfdom quite frankly, no matter how altruistic the people doing it think they are.

Here's the oft-linked Michael Crichton speech "Aliens Cause Global Warming" where he rails against the idea of consensus and has some information on Lomborg as well. It's an interesting read and it has less to do with global warming than with the scientific process in general.

The simple fact is that science produces testable theories which seek to correctly describe the world around us, while religion does not

Hahahahaha!! Is that so? Then please conduct an experiment in which you demonstrate global warming. Not in some computer model (I do computer models, I know how "realistic" they are for weather-related systems) but using the world. Whoops! We've only got one! And no time travel (to repeat experiments with same initial conditions)! And, for that matter, no ability to tell the world what levels of pollutants to release into the atmosphere. In short: no experiments.

Guess climatology is a religion now?

As for your enshrinement of argument from authority, that has been well-enough dispatched by the AC who replied before me. So I'll let that stand instead of repeating it.

I'm not sure why you went off and attacked the concept of consensus because I wrote (correctly) that the scientific debate on this matter had ended.

Because my main problem is with the idea that consensus is scientifically valid. It is not. Please read "Aliens Cause Global Warming" by Michael Crichton: http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speeches/speeches_q uote04.html

-stormin

Personally, I'm a good deal more worried about being eaten by DINOSAURS!

This is very erie... Anyone read Prey by Michael Crichton? I think the developers of this nanotechnology should read this before proceeding. Interestingly, the bibliography of this book is quite extensive...

Everyone who goes to the movies knows that global warming causes the planet to freeze over.

Hmm. I must've missed each and every one of those movies. Yes, global warming causes some localized cooling. Unfortunately, you're missing the key ingredient of polar ice caps to melt... No ice caps to melt, no lowering of localized temp due to global warming. Just a raising of the temp everywhere.

"The results themselves are interesting, but the most remarkable part was that, of the 928 papers they found, 75% accepted that global warming was caused by human activities, either explicitly or implicitly. 25% made no mention either way. And not a single paper asserted otherwise." JamesBell submits this article by a geologist which suggests that the Earth is in serious, imminent, unavoidable danger."

Funny how Michael Crichton doesn't seem to think so... And you'll be hard pressed to find an author who does as much factual research on the subjects he writes about. Not saying his word is gospel, just dispelling the myth that there are no disscenting theroies or that propganda we're regularly fed is beyond question. So much so that I won't even bother linking the articles that measure the sun as heating up or the profound peaks and vallies the Earth's climate rolls through again. I know this is one of /.'s favorite staple topics, but this is totally bogus.

Prey is coming true