Posted on 12/16/2004 7:22:32 PM PST by neverdem
On the surface, Michael Crichton's "State of Fear," can be seen simply as a thriller in which environmentalists happen to be the villains. Mixed with the story, however, are lengthy, annotated attacks on the scientific consensus that the globe is warming, human activity is a cause, and accumulating emissions of greenhouse gases may dangerously disrupt the climate system.
While Mr. Crichton includes a note emphasizing that most of the book is a "product of the author's imagination," he adds that "references to real people, institutions and organizations that are documented in footnotes are accurate. Footnotes are real."
Just one week after the book's release, it has stirred intense reactions not only among scientists, but also from people at every corner of the debate over what to do, or not do, about climate change. Several climate scientists, whose work is attacked by Mr. Crichton's characters, read the book at the request of The New York Times and contended that it did exactly what Mr. Crichton blamed his villains for doing: ignoring or distorting findings that do not fit a thesis and hyping those that do.
Dr. James E. Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that where Mr. Crichton's main character, Dr. John Kenner, says flatly that one of Dr. Hansen's climate predictions in 1988 "was wrong by 300 percent," it could not be further from the truth.
"Crichton has taken what is actually a triumph of climate science prediction and pretended that it is a failure," Dr. Hansen said.
He said that the 1988 study looked at potential climate impacts of three possible tracks for emissions of the heat-trapping gases: Possibility A, in which they grew at an exponential rate; Possibility C, in which they were severely curtailed; and a most realistic Possibility B in which emissions essentially stayed at the 1988 rate.
Mr. Crichton, through Dr. Kenner, mentions only the unlikely high-emissions possibility, Dr. Hansen said. In the intervening years, he added, "the real world is falling right on the projections for Scenario B."
Myron Ebell, who since the late 1990's has fought emissions restrictions for groups aligned with industry, most recently the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the novel was marginal literature but a great poke at environmentalists.
"As a novel it looks way too didactic, but as an anti-global-warming alarmism, anti-Malthusian diatribe it is going to drive the forces of darkness into a rage," Mr. Ebell said.
Indeed, David G. Hawkins, who runs the climate program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private Washington conservation group, called the book "a scurrilous smear." His group is clearly a model for Mr. Crichton's National Environmental Resource Fund, which sends agents in Prius hybrid cars to kill foes with bites from blue-ringed octopuses carried in sandwich bags.
Mr. Hawkins, like Dr. Hansen, said his biggest concern was that Mr. Crichton's "selective citation of isolated data" gave the book an undeserved aura of authority. "The irony," Mr. Hawkins wrote, "is that to make his case that enviros, 'establishment' scientists and the media are abusing the scientific method, he tramples it himself."
In an interview last week with The Times, Mr. Crichton said he presumed that there would be criticism from scientists. But he insisted that scientists trying to divine where conditions will be in coming decades face huge hurdles. "There's a lot of people in modern society who really think they can see the future; they don't think they're psychics, but they think they can see the future. And boy, they can't."
One undisputed fact seems to be that after many years in which books and movies dealing with climate largely failed, something has changed. Mr. Crichton's book was second on Amazon.com's best-seller list yesterday. And his publisher, HarperCollins, is part of News Corp., the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch that also, through 20th Century Fox, this year produced "The Day After Tomorrow," in which the environmentalists are heroes.
I just ordered this book yesterday, and it should be here fairly soon. Hopefully, it's as good as I think it will be.
Of course not. Liberals always write bad reviews of books they hate. It never fails to hurt the book sales though.
His first model was only lacking a southern hemisphere, continents and water vapor in the atmosphere, IFRC---
The editors of The New York Times think it's very cheeky of Michael Crichton to defy their official politically correct opinion. Now they'll have to think of a way to keep his latest book off their bestseller list.
Usually they can think of some rule why a book of which they disapprove doesn't qualify.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
<<<<<<<< ........... crickets.......>>>>>>>>>>>
I just got the book yesterday - I am already half way through it. (I'd be finished but I have some clients that are VERY anxious to have their projects completed so they take off next week.) The book is very entertaining.
Good. His usually are. :)
Bah Humbug!! Now "The Day After Tomorrow". That is some REAL science.(NOT!!!)
I'm surprised that they did not ignore the book, or question Chricton's mental stability.
Life is sweet.
Say it ain't so!
I don't do drugs anymore. Could someone who does please tell me what this means?
Dang. And that was a good zinger. Gotta save it for future use.
Another fun book
\
Fallen Angels Larry Niven
Takes a good swipe at Greenies
Environmentalists as villains? Whatever could give someone THAT idea? :-)
BTTT!!!!!!!
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