You write about the importance of "heretical thoughts" in the scientific community. What do you mean?
This is mostly about politics. In "A Many-Colored Glass" I came out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned. I believe global warming is grossly exaggerated as a problem. It's a real problem, but it's nothing like as serious as people are led to believe. The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm. It distracts people's attention from much more serious problems. That's an example. It's not so much to do about science. It's really a political question.
Why did you choose to be heretical about climate change?
I'm heretical because I was in the business of studying climate change at least 30 years ago before it became fashionable. I used to go to Oak Ridge National Laboratory [in Tennessee], which was then the leading place for studying it, and they had a very good group of people there. I went there regularly and wrote a paper, which was published, essentially about the connection between climate and vegetation. It was amazing how little we knew, and that's still true. It's just very interesting that, scientifically, almost all the statements that are made publicly are wrong.
We have no reason to think that climate change is harmful if you look at the world as a whole. Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder. And historically, the really bad times for the environment and for people have been the cold periods rather than the warm periods. The fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn't scare me at all. There's no reason why one should be scared. The economic conditions in the world and the technology change much more rapidly than the climate, so I don't see any reason for being in a hurry.
There's a huge movement among scientists and policymakers making the case that global warming is urgent. Have you publicly debated any of them?
It's not very helpful. True believers are not going to change their minds just because of me.
Why do you believe they feel so strong about the issue? Do you think they misconstrue the science?
I think it's a combination of things. Take Al Gore, who is sort of the chief propagandist. I think for him it really is a religion. He has this unshakable belief that it's his mission to spread the gospel of global warming according to Al. So there's nothing I can do about that. His film is a brilliant piece of work. It looks wonderful when you see it. The fact is of course that the pictures don't actually prove what he's saying is true.
Can you give an example?
A polar bear sitting on a melting piece of ice. The poor bear is going to drown, and it's a tear-jerker. But in fact, the bears are doing very well. The numbers of bears in the Arctic are increasing rather than decreasing. On the whole, they like it to be warm.
Just because you see pictures of glaciers falling into the ocean doesn't mean anything bad is happening. This is something that happens all the time. It's part of the natural cycle of things. We know from measurements that glaciers have been melting for 200 years at least. So it's certainly long before human activities could have caused it.
What we also know, going back 4,000 years, is that the glaciers were actually a lot smaller. They actually grew in the meantime. So it seems to be some sort of cyclical process. They grow and shrink and there's no particular reason for being worried just because they're shrinking at the moment. I'm not saying there's no climate change. Of course there's climate change. Climate change is part of the normal order of things, and we know it was happening before humans came. There is also human-induced climate change. That's certainly happening too. But I don't think there's reason for worrying about it.
So climate change has been politicized?
There is this very strong organization, the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It's a group of officially anointed experts who produce statements every five years. This community of people is regarded as sacrosanct. And they're very intolerant. They always regard any criticism as a hostile act that has to be fought. I think they have behaved pretty badly. But that's rather an unusual case in the world of science -- that's where the politics has corrupted the science. But in general, scientists are not largely against heretics. This is something rather peculiar to climate studies. It also has to do with the way [the studies are] funded. The whole community of climate experts is funded on the basis that it's an urgent problem. So [they] can't possibly say it's not urgent or else they'll lose their thumbs.
Let's talk about your largely positive perspective on biotechnology. Bill McKibben, Bill Joy and other scientists have argued that our ethical maturity is lagging behind our technological capabilities.
That's completely obvious, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't do well with the technology. Technology gives you power that you can use both for evil and good. I'm looking forward to the good uses of biotech. You can't get rid of the dark side, but one shouldn't overestimate the dark side. It's a question of balance. People have been talking so much about the dark side, so I talk about bright side just for a change.
Do we have historical evidence that scientists can handle the dark side -- apart from the simple fact that we're still here?
Take the case of recombinant DNA. It was 30 years ago when they discovered recombinant DNA, which is a gene splicing. Biologists then drew up a set of guidelines to avoid dangerous experiments. These guidelines have actually worked for about 30 years, and we have had no bad accidents in consequence. The problem, of course, is you may have deliberate evildoing. It remains to be seen whether we can handle that. But the guidelines certainly have been helpful.
How do you see the domestication of biotechnology in the near future?
I saw it happen in the case of computers 50 years ago. Here in Princeton we were building the first programmable computer. John von Neumann, the boss in charge of the project, never imagined that computers could become small and cheap and user-friendly. He thought of computers as big, expensive things that would always need experts to handle them. He thought they would belong to big organizations and that they would get bigger and more expensive as time went on. And of course, he just failed entirely to see what really would happen. They got smaller and cheaper and more powerful and ended up in the hands of schoolchildren and even preschool children.
The biggest part of the computer industry is computer games. I see the same thing happening with biotech. It's now regarded with great suspicion because it's in the hands of big corporations and they do things that people disapprove of, like putting poisonous genes into crop plants. It's become politically unpopular. But I think that it's going to become domesticated so that do-it-yourself kits will become more available to everyone. You will be able to read and write your own genomes and produce roses and orchids and lizards and snakes or any kinds of creatures, according to your own design.
You view this as a creative enterprise?
Yes. Film technology became one of the major art forms of the 20th century. I would say that writing genomes will probably be an art form for the 21st century in the same kind of way. We will have all these creative people designing creatures and trying out beautiful arrangements. It's a new form of landscape design where you can design the plants as well as the landscape. With that will probably go biotech games for children, where you give the child some eggs and seeds and a kit for writing the genomes and seeing what comes out. That will certainly be a very messy and sometimes dangerous business, but I think it's on the whole likely to be very good for education. People get a better understanding of the natural world when they can manipulate it themselves. For them it will seem natural, which of course is the way it is with computers. My grandchildren are much more at home with computers than I am. So I think it'll be the same with biotech.
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