Posted on 01/28/2005 7:29:42 AM PST by presidio9
WASHINGTON - A provocative new novel that says fears of global warming are unjustified and stoked by an environmentalist-media conspiracy is taking Washington by storm.
“State of Fear,” a novel by Michael Crichton, the best-selling author of “Jurassic Park,” and the creator of the TV show “ER”, compares scientists who warn of global warming to advocates of eugenics who said that the mixing of races would ruin the world’s genetic stock.
In an appendix explaining his position, Crichton writes: “Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon. Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made. Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century."
Sixteen of 18 top U.S. climate scientists interviewed by Knight Ridder, however, said the Harvard-trained author is bending scientific data and distorting research.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong," said Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University. “The best face I can put on this is that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The worst is that he’s intentionally deceiving people as he accuses environmentalists (of doing) in ‘State of Fear.’ "
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists say the world is warming, mainly because of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The biggest increase in those gases comes from the burning of fossil fuels. U.S. and foreign authorities predict a 5-degree Fahrenheit increase in the world’s average temperature by the end of the century. Ice sheets are melting, and species of birds and animals have moved to new areas because of warming.
Nevertheless, Crichton’s novel has grabbed the fancy of Washington political conservatives. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., in a Senate speech this month, called the book “the real story" of climate change. Conservative think tanks and columnists promote the novel.
On Friday, Crichton hits Washington, speaking to the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute and the National Press Club. His publicist, Jennifer Swihart, says he’s also having a private “high-profile meeting” with someone she isn’t allowed to name.
Jerry Mahlman, a senior climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., attributes Washington’s embrace of Crichton to fear: “The fundamental reality of the elementary physics of global warming is spooking the heck out of people and they’re looking for ways to get out of it.”
Crichton’s supporters credit his research skill, writing ability and celebrity. Crichton’s book is “influential for the simple reason that he did it," said Frank Maisano, an energy lobbyist who fights global warming measures. “He is a rock star in terms of telling stories.”
Two climate scientists said they loved Crichton’s book.
“It was a fun read and the science was handled intelligently and responsibly," said MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen. “Crichton has studied the science for the last three years and comes to the issue with intelligence as well as a professional scientific background.”
For his part, Crichton writes, “Everybody has an agenda. Except me."
"State of Fear" follows a mainstream environmental group’s foray into terrorism. The environmentalists try to trigger a tsunami, flash floods and calving icebergs to convince the world of the dangers of climate change and raise more money.
Amid that plot, Crichton drops in graphs and footnotes to buttress his contention that global warming isn’t a real problem.
Three scientists - Hoffert, physicist Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, and NASA’s James Hansen - told Knight Ridder that Crichton distorted their research in the novel.
Crichton declined to be interviewed or to answer 10 questions that were e-mailed to him through his publicist.
Hansen, the director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, takes issue with Crichton’s contention that Hansen’s 1988 prediction for warming was off by 300 percent. Hansen said his paper presented three predictions of future warming and said the middle case was the most likely. Crichton took the highest prediction and ignored the middle-case scenario, which was off by 20 percent, according to Hansen.
“How would you describe what Mr. Crichton did? Science fiction? Scientific fraud?” Hansen wrote.
To challenge the warming predictions, Crichton also cites dropping temperatures in places such as Punta Arenas, Chile; Greenville, S.C.; Truman, Mo.; and Ann Arbor, Mich.
While some places have cooled, responded Henry Pollack, a professor of geophysics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, far more places have gotten hotter. That’s especially true, he added, for the 79 percent of the world that's covered by oceans.
The world’s overall temperature is rising, according to the federal government’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Last year was the fourth hottest ever recorded. The five hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990. The last month to record below-average temperature was July 1985.
I agree, 'situational far-fetchedness', to coin a phrase.
I thought it was a very fair book that brought out the fact that popular science - which is essentially what global warming is - is a sort of Chicken Little rumor factory that has people believing the rumor despite all evidence to the contrary. The Great Population Explosion was an example of this.
However, when the sky does not fall and it all turns out to be a rumor, there is never any formal retraction of the "science" that led to this, but simply a shift to the creation of another rumor.
I liked the book a lot, btw, and I found it a real page turner!
WRONG!
Chrichton tends to leave loose ends untied and use the same plot repeatedly, but I enjoyed this book and think it better than most of the best sellers out there, the majority of which I can't stand. Which means most people will not be offended by its literary quality.
Chrichton makes the point that to get those kind of records, you have to measure the temperatures in major metropolises. For instance, the state of New York has been getting cooler for the last 30 or so years while NYC itself has been getting steadily warmer. The earth as a whole hasn't changed more than 1/2 a degree in the last 100 years, apparently.
I noticed myself in December, by checking the car thermometer, that just driving from the countryside into as small a ciy as Charlottesville, VA was enough to record an immediate temperature rise of 2 or 3 degrees.
I guess I hope the book sells well but I can't tell you how many times I just stopped and said to myself "Wait a minute, people just wouldn't do that" while reading it.
And the world temperatures rose to such heights, long before our time, that the high deserts in places like Arizona were under water. History has a way of repeating itself-thats why the study of history is important.
Remembering history is very important to us today, as scientists with a selfish agenda, tell us that today's aleged global warming is our fault and we can stop it by merely submitting to their demands that we surrender our souls to their will, like submissive zombies.
The only thing we have to fear is the insanity induced mass hysteria, invented by diabolical scientists with an evil and selfish agenda.
I thought it was a page turner too. My favorite Chrichton book was "The Great Train Robbery," I think. I liked the movie, with Sean Connery alot also.
Interesting article from yesterday http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1330159/posts
That's a mighty good picture of global warming in action.
bttttttttt
Now wait a minute. Any novel in which a Martin Sheen stand in is eaten by cannibals isn't all bad.
I'll admit it isn't entirely lacking in redeeming qualities.
Defined as "top" climate scientists according to who and using what criteria?
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists say the world is warming, mainly because of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
The overwhelming majority? I can't possibly remember all the documented counterarguments to this megalomaniac, but the figure of 15,000 sticks in my mind.
And...
If these "top" scientists understand the mechanics of global warming so well, why do their models, using the world's fastest and most sophisticated computers still are unable to "predict" weather that has already happened?
That pretty much describes this article, too.
Except Crichton only claims to be writing fiction...
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