Climate Science Fiction

America’s confidence in the scientific community was lightly rocked when the Guardian, an accredited British news outlet, claimed that NASA affiliated climate scientists at Penn State reported in a scientific study that “Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilizations.” Daily Mail Online made a similar report.

The Huffington Post was quick to refute the claim. So was Network World’s Michael Cooney. But they merely refute that it is a “NASA report.” Meaning to say, it was not a federally funded study, though one of the scientists is very clearly affiliated with NASA. Yet neither can refute that the scientific report exists. It is very real.

One of the authors of the report, Shawn Domagal-Goldman, apologized for touting his affiliation with NASA, which he undoubtedly employed to lend credence to the report’s findings. However, in his final disclaimer, he states: “I stand by the analysis in the paper.”

Here’s a sample of this “analysis,” which seems to present beneficial, neutral, and harmful outcomes to human interaction with extraterrestrials:

"A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilisation may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states.

"Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.

This “scientific report” has been at least limitedly accepted as “science,” evidenced by its ready availability through Cornell University Library online. So let me make sure I have this straight.  In modern academia, merely suggesting that eons ago a God could have been responsible for the Big Bang (an entirely obscure event that has no known catalyst) is an absurd suggestion worthy of expulsion from the scientific community. Yet suggesting that we change our way of life based upon the prospect that little green men could vaporize humanity on the grounds that we are not environmentally friendly? That is accredited science.

The “scientists” admit that it is a “highly speculative scenario.” But such “highly speculative scenarios” are the stuff of science fiction, not legitimate science. And indeed, the very same scenarios of this scientific study make up the canon of science fiction. The report relates that a beneficial result of alien interaction could result in innovations that could enhance the human experience. We’ve seen this before in a Twilight Zone episode called “The Gift” where an alien brings humanity a cure for cancer, and the film "Men In Black" suggests that this has already happened, resulting in Velcro and compact discs. Neutral outcomes to alien interaction could result in humanity being invited to a “Galactic Club” (the Federation of Star Trek?), or that aliens could become a nuisance as they do in "District 9," which the “scientists” even suggest as a point of reference for such potential interaction!

As far as harmful outcomes, we can infer from the outline of the report that there are two types of scenarios here: contact with selfish extraterrestrials, and Universalist extraterrestrials. We can assume that the selfish extraterrestrials would seek to eradicate humanity for resources or control of the planet (see: "Independence Day" and "War of the Worlds"). Universalist extraterrestrials, therefore, are the aforementioned intergalactic environmentalists that would come and destroy us because we are a threat to ourselves, the Earth, and alien beings. Because if advanced alien life forms exist, their understanding and ambition would probably fall in line perfectly with the intellectual elites of Earth, don’t you know.

Oh, and as fellow Political Palaver blogger Calvin Parker has reminded me, the latter plot is even lifted from the remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Seems to me that there isn’t an ounce of science or even originality in this report- only liberal borrowings from science fiction films.

Hasn’t the anthropogenic global warming nonsense done enough damage to the science fiction genre? It is responsible for "Waterworld," after all. Now it has to rip off science fiction by stealing its ideas and doomsday scenarios and presenting them as some new scientific theory?

Here’s what genuine science might have to say about the “speculative” prospects of alien life, as described by Rick Moran of American Thinker, referencing the study group SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). “Most experts believe that if aliens exist, their thought processes - logic, reason, perceptions - would be, well, ALIEN. They wouldn't reason the same way we do. And to ascribe a logical thought process (humans ruin their own planet therefore humans must be destroyed) to an unknown alien civilization is beyond idiocy. It enters the rarified milieu of the mentally deranged - people who would spend all day banging their heads against a wall if allowed.”

But that’s modern science for you- scientists banging their heads against a wall trying to prove to a disbelieving populace that carbon proliferation leads to dangerous warming trends and will ultimately lead to famine, scorched earth, dangerously rising sea levels, and now alien invasion. If academics really wanted to solve a mystery of the universe, perhaps they could figure out how these increasingly absurd studies suggesting the outrageous ramifications of anthropogenic climate change are continually passed off as “science.”

William Sullivan

To New York: Consider the Shuttle a Gift. Sincerely, Texas

Anyone with half a brain knows that the first two places ever considered for retired NASA shuttles should be Houston, TX and Cape Canaverel, FL. No two cities are more identified with or have done more for space exploration.

But New York, known more for pizza and rude inhabitants than space travel, will now be home to a retired shuttle, while Houston got snubbed. Texans are understandably confused, so Chuck Schumer said in response:

"When people from Paris, Beijing, Tokyo and Amsterdam start saying they want to go to Houston, maybe then they'll get a shuttle," Schumer told the Daily News. "I'd say to Texas, don't mess with New York."

Sorry, Chuck. No one's buying that you're a tough guy. And thanks for confirming that "arrogant New Yorker" stereotype.

I'd go on, but I think AlamoZ in the comment section of the linked article pretty much sums up what is likely every Texan's feelings on the matter:

That's okay Schumer, New York can keep the shuttle. In fact, California can keep theirs too. Texas will just keep on taking all of your tax-burdened corporations as well as your productive members of society.

Now that just could not be said any better.

William Sullivan

Interesting Viewpoint on Obama and His Views on America

Normally I wouldn't post editorials that are readily available online on this blog but this particular one really struck a chord. Krauthammer takes a step back and analyzes Obama's perceptions about America versus Obama's perceptions of himself.

Obama can be selective when it comes to modesty
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Remember NASA? It once represented to the world the apogee of American scientific and technological achievement. Here is President Obama's vision of NASA's mission, as explained by administrator Charles Bolden:

"One was he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering."

Apart from the psychobabble — farcically turning a spacefaring enterprise into a self-esteem enhancer - what's the sentiment behind this charge? Sure America has put a man on the moon, led the information revolution, won more Nobel Prizes than any other nation by far - but, on the other hand, a thousand years ago al-Khwarizmi gave us algebra.

Bolden seems quite intent on driving home this message of achievement equivalence - lauding, for example, Russia's contribution to the space station. Russia? In the 1990s, the Russian space program fell apart, leaving the United States to pick up the slack and the tab for the missing Russian contributions to get the space station built.

For good measure, Bolden added that the U.S. cannot get to Mars without international assistance. Beside the fact that this is not true, contrast this with the elan and self-confidence of President Kennedy's pledge that America would land on the moon within the decade.

There was no finer expression of belief in American exceptionalism than Kennedy's. Obama has a different take. As he said last year in Strasbourg, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Which of course means: If we're all exceptional, no one is.

Take human rights. After Obama's meeting with the president of Kazakhstan, Mike McFaul of the National Security Council reported that Obama actually explained to the leader of that thuggish kleptocracy that we too are working on perfecting our own democracy.

Nor is this the only example of an implied moral equivalence that diminishes and devalues America. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reported that in discussions with China about human rights, the U.S. side brought up Arizona's immigration law - "early and often." As if there is the remotest connection between that and the persecution of dissidents, jailing of opponents and suppression of religion routinely practiced by the Chinese dictatorship.

Nothing new here. In his major addresses, Obama's modesty about his own country has been repeatedly on display as, in one venue after another, he has gratuitously confessed America's alleged failing - from disrespecting foreigners to having lost its way morally after 9/11. It's fine to recognize the achievements of others and be nonchauvinistic about one's country. But Obama's modesty is curiously selective. When it comes to himself, modesty is in short supply.

It began with the almost comical self-inflation of his presidential campaign, from the still inexplicable mass rally in Berlin in front of a Prussian victory column to the Greek columns framing him at the Democratic convention. And it carried into his presidency, from his posture of philosopher-king adjudicating between America's sins and the world's to his speeches marked by a spectacularly promiscuous use of the first-person pronoun - I.

Notice, too, how Obama habitually refers to Cabinet members and other high government officials as "my" - "my secretary of homeland security," "my national security team," "my ambassador." The more normal - and respectful - usage is to say "the," as in "the secretary of state." These are, after all, public officials sworn to serve the nation and the Constitution - not just the man who appointed them.

It's a stylistic detail, but quite revealing of Obama's exalted view of himself. Not surprising, perhaps, in a man whose major achievement before acceding to the presidency was writing two biographies - both about himself.

Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama's modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. What is odd is to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence - yet not of his own country's.