Mike Crichton Rocks
Harvard trained medical doctor, novelist, screenplay-writer, teacher; Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, E.R. and now State of Fear : part science fiction thriller, part popular science, part public policy briefing.
You may have wondered where I dug up the factoids in the last post Hollywood Warming. They were woven into the story in State of Fear, a novel about eco-terrorists who create natural-seeming disasters in order to convince the public that abrupt and calamitous climate change is imminent. To these environmental radicals, global warming is an ideology, a religion, never mind the inconvenient facts.
Like all of Crichton’s books it is a fun read if that is all you want. But if you take the time to study the graphs, follow the data to the original sources that are meticulously supplied, and read the authors message and his essay “Why Politicized Science is Dangerous,” then you will see global warming for what it really is -- Hollywood hysteria!
posted by Bill Lama at
3:48 PM
3 Comments:
The first place to look for balance is this scientific response to Crichton's book.
For what it's worth, I find the little things, like the fact that he doesn't educate his readers on the difference between local climate and global averages to be the most worrying.
If he wasn't using the cheap trick of pointing to weather in one place at one time, I'd have more faith that he was being straight, and not just pushing an agenda of his own.
(Global warming is about the change, if any, in average surface temperatures of the earth over a whole year. The averages for your town, or my town, contribute to that, but just as part of the bigger picture.)
Michael Crichton is on the record saying that he does not believe in global warming. Therefore, the motive behind this book is rather suspect, and I believe his objectivity might have been compromised while writing this book. I am a Crichton fan, and will read this book as well, but I hope he sticks to things he understands.
Get the National Geographics from about a year back showing the summer polar ice pack in the 1950s and now. It's a profound and shocking change. In our lifetime "Glacier" National Park will no longer have glaciers. The measureable CO2 is way up as is the temperature.
But perhaps the best anecdotal evidence is what are people in cold climates experiencing. Those I know in Minnesota are experiencing much more warmth. It used to be that if you were ice fishing and you and your car fell through the County coroner fished you out at no expense to your estate. It was a rare problem. Now it's common and the coroner charges yout estate. Perhaps that's the best evidence of all.
I have donated to the Coronet Atoll project in Papua New Guinea. Rising sea levels (admittedly only inches at this point) have brought salt into the farmers island fields and endangered the atoll's food supply and survival. My donation bought an acre of land on higher ground since that is the only real solution. Global warming is real. No immediate threat to you and me that's for sure, but a real threat to your grandchildren.
Tom
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