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Posted on 01/10/2005 1:32:33 AM PST by freepatriot32
[State of Fear, by Michael Crichton. 603 pages. Published December 7, 2004, by HarperCollins Publishers. Hardcover, $27.95. Available at www.Amazon.com.]
Michael Crichton, the author of The Andromeda Strain, Rising Sun, Jurassic Park and other block-buster thrillers, has penned a novel that could profoundly change the national and even international debate over global warming.
It's long overdue.
Crichton's State of Fear, with a reported first print run of 1.7 million copies, is an action thriller that doubles as a scientific primer on global warming and other environmental topics. Crichton's protagonists -- a scientist, a lawyer, a philanthropist and two remarkably athletic women -- race around the world foiling the plots of environmental extremists who seek to frighten the world into embracing their radical agenda. Along the way, they take time to explain to their adversaries, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind global warming and other imagined environmental crises.
Books that combine social commentary and science with fiction are not new or even rare. A socialist classic in this genre is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and two libertarian classics are Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In each case, characters who grapple with shadowy foes suddenly launch into speeches about economics, political science and history.
State of Fear is no exception: One of Crichton's characters whips out a laptop computer and portable printer to produce lists of scientific journal articles saying global climate models are fatally flawed, while another holds up a series of foam-board posters showing graphs of falling temperatures around the world. Readers are told temperatures in the Antarctic are falling and the ice cap is growing thicker, extreme weather events are becoming less frequent, and changes in land use (e.g., more roads and concrete buildings) cause more surface warming than man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases.
To persuade readers to take him seriously, Crichton offers footnotes, an appendix with sources for the data appearing in the graphs, and an annotated bibliography. In an "Author's Message" at the end the book, Crichton summarizes his own views on the science of global warming and other environmental subjects such as resource depletion, the precautionary principle, and wildlife preservation. His stated beliefs include:
* "Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made."
* "Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century."
* "The current near-hysterical preoccupation with safety is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism."
* "[T]he thinking of environmental activists ... seems oddly fixed in the concepts and rhetoric of the 1970s."
* "We need a new environmental movement, with new goals and new organizations."
No doubt, leaders of the nation's big environmental advocacy organizations will attempt to discredit Crichton, just as they have S. Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Sallie Balliunas, Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling, Tom Wigley and the late Dixy Lee Ray.
The difference this time, however, is that all those dissenters are or were prominent scientists respected by their peers but relatively unknown to the general public. Crichton is not a scientist, but he has accurately summarized their findings in a book that will reach millions of readers in the coming months, and tens of millions in the coming years.
Crichton anticipates the coming assault and puts his finger on the motivation of his critics: Environmentalism today is a multi-billion-dollar industry funded by government research grants and leftist philanthropists and dependent on fear-mongering to keep the money coming in. By exposing this scam, State of Fear could cost environmental groups millions, even billions, of dollars in the coming years.
State of Fear does not mark the beginning of the end of radical environmentalism. Public support for the movement was already shrinking as its Chicken Little predictions failed to come true and its obsolete big-government ideology put it far outside the political mainstream.
But Crichton's remarkable book may mark the end of the beginning, and the start of a "new environmental movement" that puts science ahead of ideology -- and considers the legitimate interests of everyone rather than the careers of a few.
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Splitting hairs, perhaps, but Crichton has an MD from Harvard.
By way of example, high priest of doom, Paul Ehrlich, is an entomologist.
I don't read much modern fiction but I do like something light for vacations. I'm thinking of this one for our midwinter Florida getaway. Would be interested in some FR opinions (but only if you actually read the book please).
I read it recently. Frankly, it's not his best book but I thoroughly enjoyed his take on the environmentalists and their movement. I read it straight through because I was having so much fun reading about the enviro myths.
I have to say, none of this was news to me. I keep up with the global warming debate but it was great seeing Crichton put it all together in his book. He doesn't overwhelm you with the science but he does provide references for everything he says so you can pursue it in depth if you like. I would recommend it.
An environmental researcher from a prominent Boston university told me at least 10 years ago that global warming was an idea that few of his peers actually believed, but that's where the grant money was.
As for the rest of the environmental movement, global warming is a central part of their Luddite religion.
"Splitting hairs, perhaps, but Crichton has an MD from Harvard.
Heheh maybe the author of this piece did not due his research:
____________________________________________________________
A Michael Crichton Timeline
Amazon.com reveals a few facts about the "father of the techno-thriller."
1942: John Michael Crichton is born in Chicago, Illinois on Oct. 23.
1960: Crichton graduates from Roslyn High School on Long Island, New York, with high marks and a reputation as a star basketball player. He decides to attend Harvard University to study English. During his studies, he rankles under his writing professors' criticism. As an act of rebellion, Crichton submits an essay by George Orwell as his own. The professor doesn’t catch the plagiarism and gives Orwell a B-. This experience convinces Crichton to change his field of study to anthropology.
1964: Crichton graduates summa cum laude from Harvard University in anthropology. After studying further as a visiting lecturer at Cambridge University and receiving the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship, which allowed him to travel in Europe and North Africa, Crichton begins coursework at the Harvard School of Medicine. To help fund his medical endeavors, he writes spy thrillers under several pen names. One of these works, A Case of Need, wins the 1968 Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award.
1969: Crichton graduates from Harvard Medical school and is accepted as a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Science in La Jolla, Calif. However, his career in medicine is waylaid by the publication of the first novel under his own name, The Andromeda Strain. The novel, about an apocalyptic plague, climbs high on bestseller lists and is later made into a popular film. Crichton said of his decision to pursue writing full time: "To quit medicine to become a writer struck most people like quitting the Supreme Court to become a bail bondsman."
1972: Crichton's second novel under his own name The Terminal Man, is published. Also, two of Crichton's previous works under his pen names, Dealing and A Case of Need are made into movies. After watching the filming, Crichton decides to try his hand at directing. He will eventually direct seven films including the 1973 science-fiction hit Westworld, which was the first film ever to use computer-generated effects.
1980: Crichton draws on his anthropology background and fascination with new technology to create Congo, a best-selling novel about a search for industrial diamonds and a new race of gorillas. The novel, patterned after the adventure writings of H. Ryder Haggard, updates the genre with the inclusion of high-tech gadgets that, although may seem quaint 20 years later, serve to set Crichton's work apart and he begins to cement his reputation as "the father of the techno-thriller."
1990: After the 1980s, which saw the publication of the underwater adventure Sphere (1987) and an invitation to become a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1988), Crichton begins the new decade with a bang via the publication of his most popular novel, Jurassic Park. The book is a powerful example of Crichton's use of science and technology as the bedrock for his work. Heady discussion of genetic engineering, chaos theory, and paleontology run throughout the tightly-wound thriller that strands a crew of scientists on an island populated by cloned dinosaurs run amok. The novel inspires the 1993 Steven Spielberg film, and together book and film will re-ignite the world’s fascination with dinosaurs.
1995: Crichton resurrects an idea from his medical school days to create the Emmy-Award Winning television series ER. In this year, ER won eight Emmys and Crichton received an award from the Producers Guild of America in the category of outstanding multi-episodic series. Set in an insanely busy an often dangerous Chicago emergency room, the fast-paced drama is defined by Crichton's now trademark use of technical expertise and insider jargon. The year also saw the publication of The Lost World returning readers to the dinosaur-infested island.
2000: In recognition for Crichton's contribution in popularizing paleontology, a dinosaur discovered in southern China is named after him. "Crichton's ankylosaur" is a small, armored plant-eating dinosaur that dates to the early Jurassic Period, about 180 million years ago. "For a person like me, this is much better than an Academy Award," Crichton said of the honor.
2004: Crichton’s newest thriller State of Fear is published. ____________________________________________________________ He may not be employed as a scientist but I believe he has the educational background that many scientists would strive for.
Let's hope State of Fear puts the envirowhackos in a State of Panic. Oh, wait-that's the title of his book about the Democratic Party.
Well, one thing for sure, this book will never be made into a movie. It doesn't comply with the "agenda."
I heard Chrichton on the radio recently. He said it was his desire to never appear anywhere in public.
Too bad, I was hoping for a lecture or talk on C-SPAN BookTV.
Perhaps a needed vaccination against the enviro-facists. Hopefully this book with have more beneficial influence than the DaVinci Code.
Enviormentalist are the relatively new Fascist movement. it is the equivelant of the the ayrian race BS. Junk science, forceful enforcement of the laws they ram down citizens throat. And the propaganda tactic that anyone that disagrees with them want "dirty Water,air,etc etcetc".
BTTT
My take on the book, too.
Thanks, Arkie2 - Vacation reading it is.
Thanks for the ping. It is always refreshing to see someone counter a politically-correct ideology. Good comment about the DaVinci Code.
BTTT!!!!!!!
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