This news note deals with two related issues (1) First is the report from an AAAS impact hazard symposium in Denver that marked the tenth anniversary of the Spaceguard Report and explored several issues related to communications and societal interactions. (2) The second part of this news note deals with a media flap that began when AAAS participant Geoffrey Sommer suggested that the government might wish to keep the news of an impending impact secret. Understandably, this issue was picked up by many news media, some of which ignored the context (such as that the other speakers at the AAAS symposium all asserted that such secrecy was neither desirable nor possible). We present both sides, and let you reach your own conclusions. This information will be interesting primarily for those concerned about the media and communication aspects of the NEO impact hazard. It is ironic that a symposium dedicated primarily to better communications became itself an occasion for a media flap. If you want just a general overview of the issue, go to the final item (3), a story by Rob Britt published Space.com.
(1) AAAS SYMPOSIUM: COMMENTS FROM PARTICIPANTS Symposium on "The Asteroid/Comet Impact Hazard: A Decade of Growing Awareness" American Association for the Advancement of Science: Denver, February 14, 2003 Co-Chairs: Alan Harris (Space Science Institute) and Richard Binzel (MIT) * David Morrison (NASA Astrobiology Institute, dmorrison@arc.nasa.gov). "Overview of the Impact Hazard: Risk and Mitigation." Introductory comments on the general nature of the hazard from impacts of asteroids and comets, with emphasis on current mitigation efforts, especially the Spaceguard Survey of Near Earth Objects. * Lee Clarke (Dept. of Sociology, Rutgers Univ., lee@leeclarke.com). "Responding to Panic in a Global Impact Catastrophe." Possible psychological and sociological responses of the general public to impact disasters: a vital, but until-now-overlooked, issue in discussions of the impact hazard. * Geoffrey Sommer (Rand Corp., sommer@rand.org). "Policy Frameworks for Impact Mitigation." Reasons why traditional policy analysis tools are inapplicable to this low-probability, high-consequence hazard; sensitivities to uncertainty in social response variables; identification of stakeholders and valuations; issues involving secrecy, communication, and public warnings; meta-benefits and meta-hazards of political and societal responses. * David Ropeik (Harvard University; dropeik@hsph.harvard.edu). The Impact Hazard in Its Societal Context: Risk and Risk Perception." Perspectives of a former reporter who is today professionally involved in the evaluation and communication of risk. * Clark R. Chapman (Southwest Research Inst., Boulder, cchapman@boulder.swri.edu). "Perspectives on the Impact Hazard in a Dangerous World." Evaluation of relative environmental significance of impacts of various sizes compared with the very largest natural hazards, such as earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis; issues in communication with the public; considerations of the impact hazard in the context of current public and governmental responses to terrorism. ------------------------------------------ MORRISON SUMMARY: OVERVIEW OF THE IMPACT HAZARD Today it is commonplace to realize that the Earth is bombarded by rocks from space, and that a strike by a big one could end civilization. This was not true ten years ago when the NASA Spaceguard Survey Report was released, providing a quantitative estimate of the impact hazard and concluding that we are as much at risk from impacts as from other better-know hazards such as earthquakes and severe storms. Some in the media treated this original report with derision. The situation was made worse when parts of the nuclear and missile defense communities began to promote defenses against asteroids with suspicious similarities to proposed "Star Wars" anti-missile systems. At the minimum, there was a "giggle factor" associated with claims that "the sky is falling". A decade later the impact hazard is well understood among the science community and is increasingly accepted by the public at large. Yet it is still a difficult concept, because the danger from impacts is packaged in ways that are different from anything in our experience. People are not killed individually, or by the hundreds or even the thousands, by impacts. Rather, the primary risk is from a global environmental catastrophe that might happen only once in a million years, yet could wipe out a substantial fraction of the Earth's population. Impacts are the extreme example of a hazard of very low probability but very great consequences. Nobody has ever been killed in a major impact event, yet we can -- and must -- recognize this possibility as a serous issue for individuals and the government to deal with. The best news after a decade is not that the hazard is better understood, but that we are actually doing something about it. Unlike any other natural hazard, impacts can be (1) predicted with high precision, and (2) prevented (at least in principle) by the application of space technology to defect or destroy a potential impactor. The first step in any effort to mitigate the impact danger is to find out whether we are -- or are not -- the target for such a collision within our lifetimes, or that of our grandchildren. Sometimes we talk as if this were a statistical question. In fact, talk of probabilities can be a way of covering our ignorance. We know enough about probabilities to say that any impact in our lifetimes, whether it is from an auditorium-sized "Tunguska-class" asteroid or a larger "extinction level event", is quite unlikely. You could win a bet by wagering that it will not happen. Nevertheless, we want to know whether, against the odds, our generation will need to prepare to defend the planet from this threat. Scientists have therefore shifted from an emphasis on understanding the probabilities to a straightforward program to find the potentially threatening asteroids and compute their orbits, one at a time, to see if any will hit us. That is what people and governments need to know -- not "what are the odds?" but "will we be hit?" The program to search for potentially hazardous asteroids is called the Spaceguard Survey, and it is funded by NASA and the US Air Force. The Spaceguard Goal is to find 90% of the near Earth asteroids larger than 1 km in diameter (thought to be the lower limit for a global catastrophe) by 2008, which is ten years from the beginning of the survey. We are already more than half way to our goal, with nearly 700 found out of an estimated total of 1100 such asteroids. The good news is that while many of these asteroids will hit the Earth eventually, none is on a collision course today. By finding and eliminating these asteroids, we are lowering the risk that we will be hit unawares by a global impact catastrophe. When we eventually have all the asteroids bigger than 1 km, we will probably find that none is about to hit us -- and we will thereby have removed, for our generation, concern about this particular threat to the survival of civilization. Of course, if we do find one on a collision course, we will have a very different challenge -- to mount a mitigation campaign that will divert the asteroid. Given several decades of warning and a high incentive I am confident that such an effort would succeed. As we see our way clear to meeting the Spaceguard Goal later in this decade, we must face the issue of whether to extend the survey to smaller asteroids. The small ones hit more frequently, but even in sum they pose a much smaller risk than the objects larger than a kilometer that constitute our first priority. Fortunately, the asteroids that pose the largest danger are also the easiest to find. The next step will require a greater expenditure of money and search effort in order to mitigate a smaller danger. How will science and society make these trade-offs? How do we deal with this abstract risk in a rational way? What are the processes by which this sort of issue will be debated in the science media or on the stage of public policy? These are all issues that will be discussed in this symposium marking the first decade in which we have recognized the challenge of protecting our planet from the ultimate environmental catastrophes. -------------------------- CLARKE SUMMARY: RESPONDING TO PANIC IN A GLOBAL IMPACT CATSTROPHE A common fear among high level decision makers is that people react badly to bad news ( we dont want to cry wolf ) and that they will panic if a catastrophe happens. Scientists who think and write about global catastrophes also worry that the public will panic. But our leaders are wrong, because panic in disasters, at least in the United States, is quite rare. And our scientists are often unscientific, because theyre neglecting the empirical evidence on how people behave in dire circumstances. Fifty years of social science research on disasters and extreme situations shows that panic is rare even when people feel excessive fear. Panic, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is an excessive feeling of alarm or fear&leading to extravagant or injudicious efforts to secure personal safety. Panic usually refers to desperate acts of self-preservation that have the contrary effect of harming self and/or others. People escaping from the destruction of the World Trade Center didnt act like that; nor did they disregard the needs of others around them. Instead, they behaved civilly and cooperatively. We now know that almost everyone survived if they were below the floors where the airplanes struck the buildings. That is in large measure because people did not become hysterical but instead facilitated a successful evacuation. Hollywoods disaster moviesArmageddon and Deep Impact are obvious examples, but any disaster movie will doshow people running wildly from catastrophe, knocking over their own grandmothers to save themselves. Thats dead wrong. Not only will they save their grandmothers, theyll save complete strangers, before saving themselves. This is surprising if one assumes that people are naturally self-interested. But looking at the evidence leads to the inescapable conclusion that people are naturally social. A major reason that the panic myth persists is that it provides authorities (i.e., decision-makers, politicians, and administrators) with an easy explanation for complex events. Even when panic does happensay at soccer matchesfocusing on it usually detracts attention from more important factors such as official misconduct or police over-reaction. In addition, by using pacifying speech (e.g., Everything is under control& ) to allay public fear and hiding information from the public, spokespersons cultivate distrust at a time when nothing could be more important to public safety than trust of the information that authorities disseminate. The truth is that disasters are normal. Disasters are special situations but they are still social ones, and people generally follow community expectations when things go awry just like in less tumultuous times. Furthermore, people dont usually lose their sense of community, even when every building has been destroyed. The more consistent pattern in disasters is that people connect in the aftermath and work to rebuild their physical and cultural environments. The lions share of thinking and research concerning near earth objects has gone into detection and deflection. Its a mistake to neglect the social, political, and organizational aspects of the problem. Our concern is, after all, with people: saving them, helping them, educating them, working with them. This presentation will consider these issues, and try to specify the utility, and limitations, of extant social science research for trying to predict and management the public response to a global impact catastrophe. Some of the presentation will be built on a paper, Panic: myth or reality, which appeared in the Fall 2002 issue of Contexts, the American Sociological Associations general-interest journal. On the question of why governments fear public panic, my hunch is that it's just common sense, which is sometimes more common than sense. But it's very real among high level decision makers. Even professional emergency managers often believe it. One quick example: a fellow who works for the NYC mayor was speaking at a conference for emergency managers last October. He made a big deal about how one of the lessons of Guiliani's handling of risk communication after 9.11 was that he asserted a single, strong voice; had he not, this fellow claimed, New Yorker's would have panicked. Sadly, he totally dismissed me, even though I offered real evidence to the contrary. My claim in Denver won't be that panic never happens, or that it isn't an issue regarding NEOs. It will be more measured than that. I will point to the research on disasters, all of which suggests panic, at least the usual conception of it, probably wouldn't happen. But there are big limits to the validity of the extrapolations we can confidently make from present knowledge to NEO-related issues. We can predict confidently, I believe, that if policy makers act as if people can't handle bad news then they can help produce the very irrationalities they fear. The problem of risk communication in this venue hasn't been discussed enough. --------------------------------- SOMMER SUMMARY: POLICY FRAMEWORKS FOR IMPACT MITIGATION The Spaceguard Survey goal is now within reach. Not unexpectedly, interested stakeholders are attempting to build a consensus for expanding NEO surveys to ever-smaller objects. Others are arguing for investment in mitigation (in the sense of experiments to deflect a small body). Major astronomy programs (e.g. the Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope) are adopting NEO survey requirements "ad hoc". The key policy question is whether such expansion of investment is socially desirable. More generally stated, "what (if anything) should be done next?" This is a more difficult question than one might think. There is no general policy framework for assessing the social benefit of impact hazard response programs. This is a typical state of affairs for "low probability, high consequence" problems. The familiar tools of policy analysis (such as cost-benefit) fall short, although that does not prevent their misapplication (with potentially specious results). This work attempts to establish a system approach to the NEO hazard, considering the interactions between a passive physical threat and a multitude of coupled social systems. It identifies stakeholders, their likely valuations and sources of valuation, and operating constraints. Only then is it possible to set a social goal (as opposed to technical goal) for any NEO program. The social costs of false positives are particularly interesting. Due to the technical characteristics of the process of NEO orbit determination, the usual course of events for any NEO is that a warning is issued, only to be dropped (not retracted) as the orbit is refined and the uncertainty ellipse shrinks to exclude the Earth. A high warning rate is thus endemic to the business of NEO surveying. The NEO community has attempted to regulate the effects of this process by means such as the "Torino" hazard scale, with mixed results. Media interlocutors have an institutional incentive to set their own "thresholds of alarm". It is doubtful whether asteroid scares can ever be avoided, and false warning rates will in all likelihood surge upward with future expanded surveys. Social costs associated with warnings will be addressed here. Although difficult to quantify, they are not intangible, as our collective experience with post-9/11 terror warnings amply demonstrates. On the subject of mitigation (interception), a key point to be made is that costs associated with actual impacts are a function of impact rate less interception rate. In contrast, warning costs are a function of warning rate less perception of interception capability. The role of mitigation systems in reducing social costs, notwithstanding their putative mission effectiveness, is familiar in the military sphere but has not been advanced as an argument by proponents of NEO mitigation. Finally, the concept of meta-effects (meta-benefits and meta-hazards, when value laden) will be discussed. These are defined here as social or technical shifts that may be catalyzed either consciously or serendipitously by the NEO hazard itself, with the potential to dwarf direct costs or benefits. Examples include militarization of space, nuclear proliferation, the "deflection dilemma", and asteroidal resource exploitation. In this context, any analysis treating the NEO hazard in isolation is likely to be irrelevant to the policymaker. In summary, the near-realization of the Spaceguard Survey presents an opportunity to reexamine the NEO impact hazard in a wider social context. Consideration of societys response to warnings (notwithstanding the scientific communitys attempts to influence that response) may well determine the preferred scope of future NEO survey and/or mitigation efforts. Consideration should also be given to the potential catalytic (future-shaping) effect of what are, for almost any reasonable NEO program, very small investments from the public purse. ----------------------------------- CHAPMAN SUMMARY: PERSPECTIVES ON THE IMPACT HAZARD IN A DANGEROUS WORLD The catastrophic impact of an asteroid or comet with our planet is a hazard that has become an often humorous, if horrific, touchstone for widespread public concerns about what feels like an increasingly dangerous world. Such an impact -- for example, of a body hundreds of meters or kilometers across striking the Earth at a velocity 100 times that of a jet airliner -- has never been witnessed during recorded human history. Yet such an event could happen during our lifetimes (although the chances are small) and would be devastating beyond any natural or manmade catastrophe in recorded history. Even greater cosmic impacts are known to have caused the mass extinction that rendered dinosaurs extinct, enabling mammals to thrive, and may be responsible for most of the upheavals in evolution of life on our planet. The September 11th attacks have dramatically illustrated that public reactions to disasters vary enormously compared with the "objective" destruction, as measured by loss-of-life and property. America and the world are still reeling from attacks that killed only 3000 people, compared with the estimated 20,000 victims earlier in 2001 from an earthquake in India, which barely registered in western news media after the first day. Media coverage of anthrax attacks, which killed half-a-dozen people later in the autumn of 2001, overwhelmed efforts by the Centers for Disease Control to prevent (by publicizing vaccination programs for the susceptible) many of the over 30,000 deaths that would occur from the flu during the ensuing winter. According to research in risk perception, a similar exaggerated response may be expected from the public if even a small asteroid were to strike in the near future. To the degree that media interest in potential asteroid catastrophes reflects public concern, headlines during 2002 suggest that this cosmic hazard is alarming for many people far beyond the objective unlikelihood that such a catastrophe will actually happen any time soon. Unfortunately, communication between asteroid scientists and the public -- as mediated through science journalists -- has not been good. Consider three examples from the past year: * In mid-March, CNN headlined: "Whew! Stealth Asteroid nearly Blindsides Earth." Similar stories ran in news media throughout the world about a newly discovered Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) numbered 2002 EM7. The strategies controlling the telescopic asteroid surveys necessarily find asteroids retreating from the Earth about as often as coming toward the Earth. Moreover, the danger from NEAs (and what we could do about one) almost never concerns a body bearing down onus "now"; rather it is much more likely that a newly discovered NEA willstrike decades, or millennia, from now, if indeed it will ever impact Earth. The implied failure of the search strategy to see 2002 EM7 as it came from the direction of the Sun is poppycock. Such reports serve to augment public anxiety about asteroids. * During the summer, news media worldwide (but especially in Britain) worried about another newly found NEA, numbered 2002 NT7. The BBC reported, falsely, that it "is on an impact course with Earth." Once again, scientists' understanding of the impact probabilities simply doesn't get through to the public. (Many newly discovered NEAs will be calculated to have non-zero -- but extremely tiny -- chances of striking the Earth until subsequent observations permit refined determination of their orbits; almost always the Earth will be found to be safe from impact.) Such failures are presumably due to a combination of the inarticulateness of researchers, the poor science and math education of the public, and inappropriate hyping and sloppy journalism by news media. * In late November, the media coverage took an unusual turn when headlines worldwide declared that new research showed that the danger from asteroids was less than had been thought. Even this reassuring news was wrong, since the research in question dealt with impacts by bodies only 1 to 10 meters in size, which burn up harmlessly (although spectacularly) high in the Earth's atmosphere. The bodies that statistically account for ~80% of the impact hazard (asteroids 1 to several kilometers across) are actually somewhat more numerous than had been estimated a couple of years ago, according to several more recent estimates. (Long-period comets and sub-kilometer-sized NEAs each count for about 10% of the hazard.) Against such a cacophony of misinformation, how important *is* the impact hazard? Philosophically speaking, it is very important: not only would we not be here if the dinosaurs hadn't been destroyed but impacts may be nearly unique (perhaps along with all-out nuclear war) in threatening the future of our civilization and even our species. But the chances are extremely tiny (less than 1 in 100,000) that such a cosmic holocaust will happen this century. At the other end of the scale, some people worry about the much more frequent, smaller impacts, like the ~10 megaton-equivalent blast in 1908 over Tunguska, Siberia, that downed hundreds of square kilometers of forest. And others worry about a several-hundred-meter asteroid crashing into the ocean and producing a tsunami (and resulting flooding) exceeding all historical examples. These are real threats, indeed, and the probabilities are not so tiny as to be considered negligible. There is perhaps a 10% chance that another Tunguska will happen this century, and several-tenths-of-a-percent chance of a giant tsunami-making impact. But for every such small-asteroid impact catastrophe, which might kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people, there are hundreds of more mundane but equally lethal natural disasters, like earthquakes, typhoons, and floods. So impacts, like volcanoes, constitute a tiny fraction (less than 1%) of the likely major natural disasters society will have to deal with during the next few decades. In our anxious times, we need to educate people to be more realistic in assessing the threats in their lives. It could be reassuring for many to learn that most of the seemingly frightening hazards are unlikely to kill them (this list includes sharks, terrorists, airline crashes, and asteroids). By turning more attention to lifestyle and political choices concerning eating and health, war, automobile safety, and so on, people could more effectively control their destiny. I don't mean to say that we shouldn't be prudent in dealing with the lesser hazards in our world: we should give proportional attention to reducing small threats even further. For instance, it is reasonable to think about how we might divert an asteroid away from striking the Earth, if the Spaceguard Survey actually finds one headed our way. And we should keep searching the skies. But we really can and should sleep easily at night.
(2) SECRECY ISSUE AND MEDIA REACTIONS ----------------------------------------------- At the AAAS Symposium, Geoffrey Sommer briefly suggsted that policy makters might under some corcumstances want to keep knowledge of an impending impact secret.The following excerpts from four press stories, all from the UK (and taken from Benny Peisers CCNet) express strong negative reactions and imply a major crisis in the NEO community. ---------------------------------------------- ARMAGEDDON ASTEROIDS 'BEST KEPT SECRET' From The Independent, 15 February 2003 A scientific adviser to the United States government has suggested that secrecy might be the best option if scientists were ever to discover that a giant asteroid was on course to collide with Earth. In certain circumstances, nothing could be done to avoid such a collision and ensuing destruction, and it would be best not to tell the public anything, said Geoffrey Sommer, of the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California. "When a problem arises with high uncertainty, there is an opportunity to spin the problem to avoid global panic. If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all," Dr Sommer told the association yesterday. If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss. As a matter of common sense, if you can't intercept it and you can't move people out of the way in time, there's nothing you can do in terms of reducing the costs of the potential impact," he said. "Overreaction not just by the public but by policy-makers scurrying around before the thing actually hits because we can't do anything about it anyway ... to a large extent you are better off not adding to your social costs," said Dr Sommer, who is also an adviser on terrorism. "DON'T TELL PUBLIC OF DOOMSDAY ASTEROID" From The Times, 15 February 2003 The public should not be told if scientists detect a huge asteroid on a collision course with Earth that cannot be deflected, a disaster expert said. Geoff Sommer, of the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, said that governments would be wrong to warn of an impending impact that could destroy all life if there was no realistic prospect of stopping it. The panic, misery and disruption that such a warning would cause would not be worthwhile, he told the association. ASTEROID COVER-UP PROPOSAL CAUSES NEO COMMUNITY A CREDIBILITY CRISIS From Space Daily, 17 February 2003 by Benny Peiser Just when you thought we had learned our lessons from past communication debacles and PR fiascoes, bizarre statements at the Denver AAAS meeting have plunged the NEO community into another crisis of credibility. "Don't tell Public of Doomsday Asteroid", reads the headline in today's The Times, while The Independent warns: "Armageddon Asteroids best kept secret." The Internet (Drudge Report, etc.) and fringe websites are already brimming with gloating links to this asteroid-cover-up story while doomsday prophets and conspiracy-theorists can't believe their good fortune: "We've told you so!"& The international media coverage is dominated by statements by Geoffrey Sommer, a RAND researcher who has been studying the social and economic implications of the impact hazard&. It would appear that Geoff Sommer is not so much concerned about the cost-effective handling of the apocalypse but about the future management of notoriously tricky impact risk uncertainties&.This argumetation does - unintentionally - raise one fundamental (while highly unlikely) question: Since there may be impact survivors, isn't it is our ethical obligation to do everything in our power to inform the public as soon as necessary so to increase the chances of human survival? I, for one, firmly believe it is! & The damage of contemplating a cover-up stratagem will be immense: it will strengthen the erroneous but widespread suspicion that some members of the NEO community are more concerned about covering-up or "spinning" than explaining the facts truthfully. The price we will pay for the increased mistrust this episode is causing is very high. In fact, it is much higher than any of the inadvertent asteroid scares of the last 4 years. I fear it will also be more difficult to repair the damage it has done to our integrity. -------------------------------- REACTION FROM DAVID WHITEHOUSE, the BBC reporter who started the media hyperbole over asteroid 2002 NT7 last summer when he reported that it was on a collision course with the Earth. Peisers CCNet published the following note from Whitehouse on February 17: I am quite amazed that there are some in the NEO community who have the audacity to think that if an NEO is found that is on, or suspected to be on, a collision course with the Earth then the public should not be told at any stage because if nothing can be done then why alarm people about something they cannot do anything about. Let them be ignorant until the end, unless perhaps they happen to live next door to a knowing NEO researcher! Who gives them the right to make such a decision? Who actually would make such the decision? What would be their qualifications, their accountability? Is this really regarded as being a responsible and accountable stance by those whose salaries are paid out of the public purse? Indeed, I wonder if this notion really has much support in the NEO community? The ethics of such a stance are unsupportable. There are other areas of science where the 'they don't need to know' argument has been debated and discounted as unethical. ============================ POST-SYMPOSIUM COMMENTS FROM THE AAAS SPEAKERS MORRISON: NEO searches and orbital predictions have always been carried out openly. A few years ago there were delays of several days while scientists compared their orbital predictions; today these predictions are done much more quickly and posted on the web by the JPL and Pisa teams. It is inconceivable to me that anyone involved in NEO surveys and orbital predictions would want to keep the results a secret. It is also inconceivable that astronomers could keep such a secret even if they wanted to. A real impact prediction, even at low probability, would be known all over the world in a matter of hours. At the AAAS, Geoff Sommer mentioned the option of keeping a prediction secret only in an extreme hypothetical case -- a very short warning of an extinction-level impact. Such a case cannot arise today. We already know there are no extinction-level asteroids in Earth-crossing orbits. Any comet in this class would be visible in amateur astronomy telescopes all over the world for months before it hit. This is a tempest in a teapot -- a comment by one individual about a hypothetical situation that cannot today arise. None of the other AAAS panelists supported the idea of secrecy even in this extreme example. We are all committed to open sharing of our results with the world, and we said so at the AAAS. Such openness is sometimes temporarily embarrassing when the press play up a low probability prediction, but that is far better than trying to impose secrecy. SOMMER: I'm afraid that the AAAS press office quoted me rather severely out of context. Their press release (which I didn't get to see until two minutes before the press conference) has me saying "if you can't do anything about a warning, there is no point in issuing a warning at all. If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss". It prefaces that by saying that I "take the controversial stance of advocating silence and secrecy". I most certainly would not take such an absolute stand. The primary purpose of a NEO survey is to enable a response, and absent a mitigation capability that purpose is vitiated. The context of all this is an argument for mitigation. The "ignorance may be bliss" argument is not trivial, however. Analytically, the question is whether the doom-warned population has a negative discount rate - a "dread" factor. Does the population as a whole have a "willingness to pay" to avoid bad news? It's hard to say. Certainly, in the micro sense, the effect is real. Do we prefer a quick (but ignorant) death for Columbia's crew, or do we wish for them more time to "make peace with their God" before their inevitable end? I would guess the former. In the context of astro-doomsaying, is there an absolute right to information? Many passionately believe so. Yet, how many high-dread people are outvoted by one "tell me the worst" person? I don't know - hence, I don't advocate "silence and secrecy" as absolutely as the AAAS press release indicates. It all depends, as I have said many times, on valuations. What gives the government the right to decide? What gives the government the right to decide on any issue of social welfare? CLARKE: My view is that for both moral and practical reasons, the benefits of secrecy should be sacrificed for the benefits of democracy and informed consent. It is true that Sommer and I disagreed about some things at the AAAS meetings. We're intellectuals; that's what intellectuals do. It is true, I think, that Sommer believes full secrecy is a possibility that decision makers might have at their disposal. I think, as a practical matter, that as soon as 3 people knew of a potentially dangerous situation secrecy would no longer be possible because the information would spread as quickly as a computer virus. The AAAS session in which I participated was an intellectually engaging one, in which many interesting and challenging things were said. It was, after all, a session devoted to the idea that we should be talking about these issues. One, but only one, of those issues is whether we should keep information from the public. We should not keep secret information about any impact, should astronomers discover one is imminent. But we, as a public, should definitely be talking about the issues. Geoffrey Sommer did the debate a great service by proposing a scenario that needs to be talked about. Set aside what Sommer, as an individual, believes. The issue itself is exceedingly important. Keeping secret something potentially very dangerous is an idea that would resonate very well with the current administration in Washington. It would probably resonate with most high-level decision makers. I denounce extreme secrecy about events and policies that redound negatively to the populace. Geoffrey Sommer has said he holds similar sentiments. The issue is big, but the individuals are not. ROPEIK: Risk communication literature suggests that secrecy would be a serious mistake. In the face of such an unlikely event as an impending global extinction catastrophe we couldn't do anything about, it would still be important for governments to maintain some order and avoid absolute chaos. Secrecy, not telling people that they were about to die, would destroy trust in government, presuming that such a huge secret would get out, a pretty safe assumption. That would make the final days, weeks, or months much worse. It's a bad idea. CHAPMAN: I fear that when the small flames of these controversies get fanned by those who prefer to see conflict than convergence and consensus, the real messages that we have to deliver (such as at the AAAS Symposium) tend to get lost in the noise. I think that is unfortunate. For sure, the individual events (bad headlines about potential impacts of objects like NT7 last summer) aren't explicitly remembered, even by the most attentive readers. But repetition of such misunderstandings (and very low probability, high consequence events are inherently difficult to intuit) has a toll. Serious consideration of the NEO hazard could even help us put things of urgent concern to the nation (like the terrorism scale) in context, but that small opportunity is diminished when much of the press coverage focuses on what is really a non issue.
(3) SUMMARY REPORT ON THE SECRECY ISSUE ASTEROIDS AND SECRECY: IF END IS NIGH, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW? By Robert Roy Britt, Space.com 24 February 2003 Suppose a giant asteroid is heading toward Earth right now. Impact is certain. The consequences are expected to be globally devastating, with the human race among the casualties. The chances of doing anything about it are zero, the government decides. Would you want to know? Or would you prefer the Feds keep the information secret and spare you and your neighbors a bunch of pointless worrying? In essence, the question concerns whether you'd prefer to die in ignorant bliss, or if you'd like some options. The alternatives might include dying in a panic, calmly making peace with your Maker, finally taking the kids to Disneyland or -- who knows? -- making a last-ditch effort to fight odds your elected leaders say are wholly against you. For several reasons that will become apparent as you read on, the question is largely moot. But that didn't stop it from coming up at a major science gathering earlier this month and generating a global round of conspiracy headlines. According to some articles, the U.S. Government has been advised to withhold information of a catastrophic impact, were one ever found to be imminent. The Times of London put this headline above its story: "Don't Tell Public of Doomsday Asteroid." The media accounts centered around the words of one graduate student (the press variously and erroneously called him a scientist, a researcher and a government adviser). Geoffrey Sommer spoke as part of a seven-person panel Feb. 13 at an impact hazard symposium during a meeting of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held in Denver. Controversial words Here are the widely quoted words, from an AAAS press release, attributed to Sommer (much to his surprise, he said later): "When a problem arises with high uncertainty, there is an opportunity to spin the problem to avoid global panic. If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all. If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss." Those words were taken "severely out of context" and "inaccurately described my position," according to Sommer, who says he was not advocating a position but rather discussing choices involving information disclosure that policymakers would face. Yet the press release was sent out with, effectively, an AAAS stamp of approval, and for several days, all Sommer could do was watch as the comments generated ire among readers and some frustration on the part of scientists. However misconstrued, the quote seemed to stem logically enough from a case study that was part of Sommer's doctoral dissertation at the RAND Graduate School, operated by the RAND Corporation (the media inaccurately placed him as an employee of the RAND Corporation working for the government). The dissertation's topic: Low-probability, high-consequence threats and how policymakers might evaluate them. Whatever the circumstances, Sommer received some vitriolic responses to his words, which many saw as downright wrongheaded and arrogant at worst, pessimistic at best. Here are reactions from three separate people, based on e-mails supplied by Sommer himself: "It's rather arrogant of you to presume that not a single human would survive after a large impact. Perhaps no one would. If people don't try, the odds are certainly worse." "One doesn't have to be a RAND 'expert' to realize that the world would rather go down fighting, than to be lulled into a false sense of security." "You are not God, Mr. Sommer & I suppose if you were diagnosed with a rapidly progressing terminal illness, you would prefer to be told, 'All your tests came back OK, Mr. Sommer. There's nothing wrong with you at all.'" The last note came from James Cass, who also told Sommer, "Your arrogance is pathetic." Upon reflection, Cass told SPACE.com: "I realize that some of my words were a bit acidic, but after I read Mr. Sommer's comments I was livid." 'Inconceivable' Late last week, Sommer explained his true stance to SPACE.com. More on that shortly. First, the reaction of scientists -- most of whom were somewhat confused about what Sommer was actually trying to say -- shows how passionately they detest secrecy. Across the board, experts in asteroid search efforts and death-by-space-rock risk assessment, collectively known as the Near Earth Object (NEO) community, contest whether secrecy could ever be warranted, let alone possible. "It is inconceivable to me that anyone involved in NEO surveys and orbital predictions would want to keep the results a secret," David Morrison, who spoke at the same AAAS symposium, said in an e-mail interview. "It is also inconceivable that astronomers could keep such a secret even if they wanted to. A real impact prediction, even at low probability, would be known all over the world in a matter of hours." That is true. In fact, dozens of amateur astronomers -- employed by no government or institution in their backyard endeavors -- help with the follow-up observations needed to pin down a newly discovered rock's actual trajectory. They work from data stored at two publicly available Web sites, one in the United States and one in Italy. Journalists have frequently accessed these databases to fuel doomsday stories about asteroids that had long odds of ever coming in. In each case, the odds have dropped from highly improbable to zero in a matter of days or weeks. The scare stories leave raw scars on the NEO community and its sense of credibility, perhaps making the researchers particularly sensitive to this latest round of doomsday headlines laced with suggestions of official cover-up. Morrison, senior scientist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the Ames Research Center, called the whole affair a tempest in a teapot. He said there are no asteroids big enough to cause mass extinction currently in Earth-crossing orbits. Even a threatening comet, which by nature would start farther out in the solar system and might wander inward for the first time after centuries of deep space oblivion, would be spotted by amateur telescopes months before it hit, he said. Real threat Over time, orbits change, however. Asteroids that aren't threatening now might become so in a few centuries or millennia. All leading experts, Morrison included, agree that Earth will eventually get pummeled again by a 1-kilometer-wide (0.62-mile) object or bigger. Civilization might teeter. Odds are very slim, however, that it will happen in any given year or century. It could come next year, or not for a million years. (Scientists estimate there are 1,100 1-kilometer and larger NEOs; about 640 of them have been found. Hundreds of thousands of smaller objects roam the same region of space as Earth, so the impact odds for smaller, regionally destructive asteroids are greater in any given time frame. But the bulk of asteroid search funding and political discussion to date has focused on rocks above the 1-kilometer threshold.) Sommer said that prior to his symposium talk, he had only two minutes to review the press release containing his comments, and it had already been distributed to reporters. At the meeting and in remarks since, he has worked to put it all into context. "I don't advocate 'silence and secrecy' as absolutely as the AAAS press release indicated," Sommer wrote Feb. 15, two days after the symposium, in an electronic newsletter called CCNet, which monitors the science and politics of the NEO search and threat. In the CCNet writings, however, Sommer did not appear to back down entirely from the idea that hiding information might be an option under certain circumstances in order to avoid social panic and the tremendous costs that might be associated with it (think looting, profiteering, and economic collapse, he says). One point Sommer stressed is that the governments of this Earth need to get together and come up with a mitigation strategy -- what to do if an asteroid is found bearing down our pale blue dot. Absent a plan to deflect or destroy an incoming asteroid, or to survive the hit, Sommer said policy makers might question the value of telling the public it is doomed. CCNet is run by Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist who contemplates "neocatastrophism" in various forms. Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University in England, responded: "Even with little time left for mitigation, many activities could be taken by the world community to attempt human survival of such a global disaster." Peiser agrees with Morrison and others that in the case of a huge impacting object -- a planet destroyer -- there would be a lot of time to prepare and no possibility for secrecy. Sommer made it clear late last week that he agrees with these points, too. Peiser also said science has not even reached a point where it can state with certainty whether an impact would doom humanity. Further, if a gargantuan incoming object is detected, it would be weeks, months or years before a firm determination was made that it was going to hit Earth, or not. For the record After the CCNet exchange, we asked Sommer to clarify his position. "I absolutely do not advocate government keeping secret news of any impending disaster that would wipe out the world's population," Sommer said. "I take no stand on what the policymakers should do," he said. "I most certainly never advocated that information be withheld from the public. In the purely hypothetical scenario at issue, my point is simply that policymakers should weigh the plusses and minuses of telling people they were about to die and that there was nothing that could be done to save them. It is a value judgment for the policymaker to make." Sommer said the whole example is peripheral to his main point, which is that warning the public of an impending disaster "is a social function, not just a technical function, and that the costs of warning (including false positives) must be considered in the calculus of resource allocation and program design." Meanwhile, researchers are concerned over how media coverage surrounding the affair might tarnish the public view of NEO science. Clark Chapman, of the Southwest Research Institute and another of the symposium speakers, worries about the collective damage to scientific credibility from coverage of the Sommer controversy combined with hype surrounding previous asteroid scares. Chapman said individual flames of controversy tend to be small, but they get fanned "by those who prefer to see conflict rather than convergence and consensus." Like other NEO researchers, Chapman is concerned that the public will come to distrust serious asteroid science and the need to search for, catalogue and understand space rocks, as well as to begin looking into mitigation strategies. Importantly, as Sommer points out, there is no strategy, in the United States or elsewhere, for what to do in the face of a natural threat from space. And that, several other experts contend, is a legitimate concern. At issue is how and whether to deflect or destroy an incoming rock, something no one knows how to do. Similarly important is the need to develop plans for moving coastal residents to higher ground. Because our planet is two-thirds water, any impact is likely to be an ocean splashdown, whose greatest immediate effect might be tsunami waves that could destroy coastal regions on two continents within hours. The panic myth At the heart of Sommer's case is how people would respond to the knowledge of looming cataclysm. Lee Clarke, who advocates asteroid-mitigation planning, spoke at the AAAS asteroid symposium, too. The Rutgers University sociologist studies big-time catastrophes and the supposed public panic that comes with them. He says the whole concept that everyone freaks out is largely a myth. "We have five decades of research on all kinds of disasters -- earthquakes, tornadoes, airplane crashes, etc. -- and people rarely lose control," Clarke said. "Policy-makers have yet to accept this. People are quite capable of following plans, even in the face of extreme calamities, but such plans must be there." A scheme for survival would require good international communication and ought to be discussed in the United Nations, so that poorer countries are not left out of any world blueprint for notification and mobilization, Clarke said. "Earth's history is filled with unanticipated catastrophes and their disastrous consequences. With appropriate planning, the human toll could be lessened." Clarke figures the worst thing governments could do is lose public trust by withholding information. But he points out that secrecy might appeal to some public officials. "Keeping secret something potentially very dangerous is an idea that would resonate very well with the current administration in Washington," Clarke said. "It would probably resonate with most high-level decision makers." In that light, "Geoffrey Sommer did the debate a great service by proposing a scenario that needs to be talked about," Clarke said, adding that the discussion was and should continue to be an intellectual one, regardless of whether scientists disagree on various points. "The issue is big," Clarke said, "but the individuals are not." |
