[Brian328i]

Did some searches and found nothing on this, just popped up on news.ask.com tonight so thought you'd all like to laugh.

[Petronski]

We're doomed. Doomed! DOOMED!!!

[RightWhale]

Good point. Crichton wrote 'Eaters of the Dead,' which was an attractive paperback because of the line art. The story itself, about what Vikings found frightening, was a little simplistic, but not bad for an early novel.

[Celtic Rose]

Yup, he wrote a FICTION book, and he is under attack for misrepresentation of facts. I'm sorry, but anybody who trusts a fiction book to make decision is stupid. They are meant to be enjoyed, and I, personally, rather enjoy reading Crichton's work.

[Mike Darancette]

I'll bet that Crichton can prove the points he made in the book.

The premise of the book is "follow the Money".

[Ain Soph Aur]

Meh. Uninformed liberals like to shout "Global Warming" and then call anyone who laughs at them "ignorant of scientific facts."
Well, I've got your facts right here. The Earth's climate is actually colder than it has been through most of the planet's history. Also, we have evidence in the geologic record of very rapid climate changes in the Tertiary Period. Many of these changes included temperature increases much more drastic than what we're undergoing today, and these increases happened on a timescale of decades without human help. Right now, there's not really any scientific evidence at all to show that what we're doing is having much effect at all.
So why is this such a big issue, why do "scientists" keep talking about it? Simple. There's money to be made. Now that the sickeningly-uninformed public has largely bought into it, many scientists have made their careers out of fear-mongering. If the public were to all of a sudden realize that the evidence doesn't exist, a lot of people would have to study an actual problem for a lot less money.

[Pete'sWife]

Who would you believe, Michael Crichton or Ted Danson?

[freedomfiter2]

Crichton portrays environmentalists as uninformed, hypocritical, or simply evil.

That's pretty much how I see it.

[sauropod]

read later

[robomurph]

Crichton's Cal Tech lecture.

Highly recommended.

[goldstategop]

Liberals are hysterical when their dogma is questioned. "The sky is falling, the sky is falling"! (laughing)

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[jpsb]

Global warming is real. Stars the size of our sun, expand in size as they age, so our sun is getting larger every year. I don't think the expansion is linear, but the Sun is getting bigger, and as it does the Earth will get warmer and there ain't nothing to be done about it with our current or near future technology. In fact in the future the earth will become so hot that the entire planet will melt, just before the expanding Sun comsumes the entire inner sloar system. So yea, global warming is real.

A billion years ago the Earth was a ball of ice, today it's a ball of water and billion years from now the earth will be a ball of steam.

[Spyder]

Just got the book from the library and am now about halfway through it. It's very well written and despite the "individual reviews" on Amazon i don't find it at all "preachy." I guess one only finds something "preachy" if they disagree with it.

Crichton states at the front of the book that all of his footnotes are real. I found a lot of the factual information in the book fascinating - and so different in toto than the quotes chosen by the envirowhackos.

The storyline itself is great, too. Very engrossing and typical Crichton readability.

[TN4Liberty]

Does this mean that the premises of all fiction books will now be questioned? That would be interesting.

I noticed this.... "Crichton also strains to discredit global-warming fears by presenting them as faddish. He has one environmentalist say (incorrectly), “in the 1970s, all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming.” Global warming did level off between 1940 and 1975. We now know that this was largely a result of dust and aerosols sent by humans into the atmosphere that temporarily overwhelmed the warming effect from greenhouse gases. In the 1970s, it was not yet clear whether the cooling effect from aerosols would be greater than the heating produced from greenhouse gases. Now we know: the heating wins. This episode, fairly explained, would give readers greater confidence in our understanding of climate science, not less. "

Wow... talk about straining credulity. Aerosols apparently voted for global cooling before they voted for global heating.

[xp38]

This moron probably thinks The Day after Tomorrow was an insightful warning to us all.