Posted on 12/23/2004 6:23:50 AM PST by OESY
In today's segmented America, Michael Crichton's new novel "State of Fear" might seem to be just reading for red states....
The theory of global warming — Crichton says warming has amounted to just half a degree Celsius in 100 years — is that "greenhouse gases," particularly carbon dioxide, trap heat on Earth, causing . . . well, no one knows what, or when.
Crichton's heroic skeptics delight in noting things like the decline of global temperature from 1940 to 1970. And that since 1970 glaciers in Iceland have been advancing. And that Antarctica is getting colder and its ice is getting thicker....
One of the good guys in "State of Fear" cites Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which least is known." Which is why 30 years ago the fashionable panic was about global cooling.
The New York Times (Aug. 14, 1975) saw "many signs" that "Earth may be heading for another ice age." Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned about "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation." "Continued rapid cooling of the Earth" (Global Ecology, 1971) could herald "a full-blown 10,000 year ice age" (Science, March 1, 1975). The Christian Science Monitor reported (Aug. 27, 1974) that Nebraska's armadillos were retreating south from the cooling....
Gregg Easterbrook, an acerbic student of eco-pessimism, offers a "Law of Doomsaying": Predict catastrophe no later than 10 years hence but no sooner than five years away — soon enough to terrify, but far enough off that people will forget if you are wrong.
Because Crichton remembers yesterday's discarded certitudes, millions of his readers will be wholesomely skeptical of today's.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Gee, I'd love to spend an evening with Bjorn Lomborg. He can leave his thermometer under my bed anytime. ;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.