The Guardian
July 23, 2015

by Roger Pielke, Jr.

The search for extraterrestrial life is seen as one of pure curiosity. But, as in other areas of science, we should worry about the consequences of success.

Fifty years ago the era of robotic exploration of our solar system was just beginning. In July 1965 the Mariner IV probe sent back data showing that Mars did not have vegetation, much less canals crisscrossing the planet as envisioned by earlier generations of astronomers. The New York Times opined that Mars was “The Dead Planet” with the chances for life of any kind to be “infinitesimal.”

Carl Sagan, astronomer and early rock star scientist, asked why the media was so quick to “deduce a lifeless Mars?” The answer, he wrote, was a sense of “relief.” He posited that “finding life beyond Earth – particularly intelligent life … wrenches at our secret hope that Man is the pinnacle of Creation.” The meaning of the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life Sagan concluded is “many things to many men.”

Earlier this week Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist and modern rock star scientist, along with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced that they would be launching a new project to boost efforts to look for intelligent life outside our solar system. Milner, who is funding the effort, said that he had been “thinking about this since I was a child, reading Carl Sagan’s book.”

Upon hearing of the new project, called Breakthrough Listen, I was reminded, of all things, of a recent prison break. Last month two convicted murders escaped from a New York prison. They had spent months carefully planning and executing their escape, which involved cutting and digging their way through walls, pipes and concrete. Remarkably, however, the pair gave little thought to what they would do if they actually succeeded in their plans. The consequence of the lack of planning was a short effort to flee from authorities followed by the death of one prisoner and re-capture of the other by authorities.

The search for extra-terrestrial life shares some similarities. We are investing considerable attention and resources into the search, but little into thinking about the consequences of success. As Carl Sagan imagined, it is as if we expect to fail, which would be a relief. Even Milner says, “It’s quite likely that we won’t find anything.” But what if we do succeed? What then?

Let’s face it, talking about aliens can be seen as a little weird, even in academia, where we study all manner of weird things. A search of Google scholar for “extraterrestrial life” returns only 15,100 hits, the vast majority of which are about “search.” In contrast, “genetically modified” returns more than 800,000, “nanotechnology” almost 900,000 and “climate change” more than 1.6 million.

Assessing technologies and their implications for society is clearly important, but it seems that we have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the possibility of success of projects like Breakthrough Listen. So, what should we be doing instead? Read more …

USA Today
July 17, 2015

by Roger Pielke, Jr.

The U.S. Senate did something Wednesday that it has never done before. No, not voting itself a pay cut. It held a hearing on the governance of soccer, and it raised disturbing questions about the federation that oversees the sport in this county, U.S. Soccer.

Congress gets a lot of criticism, much of it well-deserved. But on issues related to sports it actually has a strong, bipartisan track record of success. Whether it is steroids in baseball or athlete rights in the NCAA, Congress seems to be able to handle partisan differences and focus attention on what matters when it comes to sports. Wednesday’s hearing on FIFA, the Swiss-based organization that runs global soccer, was no different.

Soccer is becoming a thing in the United States. The U.S. women just won their third World Cup, and shattered viewership records along the way. The men’s team has its own record of successes in the World Cup and is currently trying to win its second consecutive Gold Cup tournament.

But as everyone knows, all is not well in the governance of the sport. In May, U.S. and Swiss governments collaborated in the arrest and indictment of 14 people associated with an investigation into corruption at the highest levels of the sport. Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney general, said that these arrests were only the beginning of a broad inquiry that has defrauded U.S. businesses and taxpayers.

Thus, it was no surprise when FIFA president Sepp Blatter declined an invitation to participate in Wednesday’s hearing. What was a surprise was that the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, Sunil Gulati, also declined an invitation.

Instead, U.S. Soccer chief executive officer Dan Flynn represented the federation, claiming with a straight face to be more knowledgeable on the subject of the hearing than Gulati, who sits on the FIFA executive committee.

Flynn’s appearance before the committee was a disaster. At times evasive and others confused, Flynn even turned off his microphone at one point to consult with a colleague about how to answer a simple question.

U.S. Soccer are supposed to be the good guys in FIFA. Wednesday’s performance raised some doubts as to whether U.S. Soccer is really ready for the reform being forced by the Department of Justice.

When asked why U.S. Soccer hadn’t been more forceful to root out corruption, Flynn first pleaded ignorance – a stance hard to reconcile with years of media reports detailing FIFA’s corrupt practices. It’s also hard to reconcile when considering that the U.S. member of the FIFA Executive Committee, Chuck Blazer, lived in a swanky Trump Tower apartment in New York City, and kept a second one just for his cats. We now know that Blazer skimmed off tens of millions of dollars from soccer bodies, according to his guilty plea. Read more …

by Roger Pielke, Jr.

The Guardian
June 23, 2015

With his latest statement on science, technology and the environment, Pope Francis has sought to change the debate on climate change. But his statement has broader significance for the way we think about the future

The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ released by Pope Francis last week has generated a wide range of reactions ranging from enthusiastic praise to uneasy criticism. For some, the Pope’s key message was about climate change, for others about the downsides of economic growth, and some saw in it a reconciliation of science and religion. But the Encyclical also lays bare a debate much larger than each of these perspectives, one that is fundamentally about what kind of world we want to inhabit. The Pope’s message is just the latest intervention in a debate over technologies that has been going on for centuries.

Pope Francis writes of the “human roots of the ecological crisis” defined in terms of deference to a “technocratic paradigm” which contains “the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth.”

The Pope’s choice of language is evocative of historian Lynn White, Jr.’s classic essay, “The Historic Roots of our Ecologic Crisis,” written almost 50 years ago in Science. White argued that technological innovation was a “realization of the Christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature.” A consequence of this mastery, White suggested, is to “give mankind powers which, to judge by many of the ecologic effects, are out of control. If so, Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt.”

White’s proposed alternative to the dominant Christian narrative anticipated the Pope’s Encyclical: “we should ponder the greatest radical in Christian history since Christ: Saint Francis of Assisi” (from whom the Pope took his name). White continued: “the present increasing disruption of the global environment is the product of a dynamic technology and science which were originating in the Western medieval world against which Saint Francis was rebelling in so original a way. Their growth cannot be understood historically apart from distinctive attitudes toward nature which are deeply grounded in Christian dogma.”

What Lynn White was pointing to in the 1960s and Pope Francis writes of today can be viewed as a struggle over the meaning of humanity on planet Earth. What is our role? Do we dominate nature? Or are we of nature, even subservient to it? What kind of world do we want? What should we together value? Read more …