Free Republic

Thank you Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the important subject of politicization of research. In that regard, what I would like to emphasize to the committee today is the importance of independent verification to science. In essence, science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid-and merits universal acceptance-only if it can be independently verified. The impersonal rigor of the method means it is utterly apolitical. A truth in science is verifiable whether you are black or white, male or female, old or young. It's...

...The drumbeat on global warming was intended to reach a crescendo during the run-up to the summit at Gleneagles. Prime Minister Blair has been a leader in the global warming crusade. (Whether his stance reflects simple conviction or the need to propitiate his party's Left after Iraq is unknown.) In the event, for believers, Gleneagles turned out to be a major disappointment. On the eve of the summit, the Economic Committee of the House of Lords released a report sharply at variance with the prevailing European orthodoxy. Some key points were reported in the Guardian, a London newspaper not hostile...

"Banned in the United States more than 30 years ago, it remains America's best known toxic substance. Like some sort of rap star, it's known just by its initials; it's the Notorious B.I.G. of pesticides. Now DDT is making headlines again. Many African governments are calling for access to the pesticide, believing that it's their best hope against malaria, a disease that infects more than 300 million people worldwide a year and kills at least 3 million, a large proportion of them children." . . . "What people aren't remembering about the history of DDT is that, in many places,...

Michael Crichton’s technopolitical thriller State of Fear (HarperCollins) turns on a controversial notion: that all the talk we’ve been hearing about global warming—polar ice caps melting, weather systems sent into calamitous confusion, beach weather lingering into January—might be at best misguided, at worst dead wrong. It’s The Da Vinci Code with real facts, violent storms, and a different kind of faith altogether.

Michael Crichton has written that rarest of books, an ­intellectually dishonest novel. Crichton has made a fortune exploiting the public’s fears: Prey (fear of nanotechnology), Rising Sun (fear of Japanese technological supremacy), and Jurassic Park (fear of biotechnology). These books attack the hubris of those who use technology without wisdom. In Prey, he warns, “The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything that we do.” Given the author’s past, one might expect that a Crichton book on global warming would warn about the risk of catastrophic climate change—the...

Michael Crichton has written that rarest of books, an ­intellectually dishonest novel. Crichton has made a fortune exploiting the public’s fears: Prey (fear of nanotechnology), Rising Sun (fear of Japanese technological supremacy), and Jurassic Park (fear of biotechnology). These books attack the hubris of those who use technology without wisdom. In Prey, he warns, “The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything that we do.” Given the author’s past, one might expect that a Crichton book on global warming would warn about the risk of catastrophic climate change—the...

Michael Crichton's scary movies, like "Jurassic Park," have made billions. He has sold 100 million copies of his scary books. And now he's telling us: Don't be scared. He almost didn't write his latest book, "State of Fear." "I'm 62 years old," he told me. "I've had a good life. I'm happy. I'm enjoying myself. I don't need any of the flak that would come from doing a book like this." Flak is coming because the fear Crichton is questioning is fear of global warming. And as Crichton told me, "people's feelings about the environment are very close to religion."...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com The green 'State of Fear'By Suzanne FieldsPublished February 3, 2005          Michael Crichton is a high-tech, science-savvy Renaissance man in the 21st century. He has sold more than a hundred million books, which have been translated into 30 languages. Twelve became high-grossing movies. Children everywhere have "Jurassic Park" nightmares.     His books are so popular in China that when the calcified remains of a species of dinosaur was discovered there, the Chinese named it Bienosaurus crichtoni in his honor. In 1992, People magazine named him one of the "Fifty Most Beautiful People." Now a new kind...

There's a problem with Michael Crichton's new thriller, and it shows up before the narrative even begins. In a disclaimer that follows the copyright page, Crichton writes: ''This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions and organizations in this novel are the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct. However, references to real people, institutions and organizations that are documented in footnotes are accurate. Footnotes are real.'' Footnotes? Yes, there will be footnotes. Although ''State of Fear'' comes dressed as an airport-bookstore thriller, Crichton's readers will discover...

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...

So often what you think you know may not be so. And it's a reason I love the book just out from America's top-selling thriller writer, Michael Crichton. He's the man who created the popular TV medical drama "ER," wrote "Jurassic Park," which ranks among the top 10 grossing films of all time, and much more. Crichton's books and movies have grossed more than $4 billion. Now, he's tackling global warming in his latest techno-thriller, "State of Fear."

[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...

Last week I posted a thread on Tom WOlfe's new book, "I Am Charlotte Simmons," about life on an Ivy League campus in 2005. There were some great comments (including my favorite, which I don't agree with, that "71-year-old men should not write about 21-year-old girls"). I thought Wolfe captured the tensions of a culturally conservative young woman who found herself totally adrift in a sea of immorality and lunacy pretty well. The other night, Wolfe was on C-SPAN's "Booknotes" with Brian Lamb. The calls were remarkably level-headed. One caller asked Wolfe about conservatism in his books. He didn't say...

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...

E-mail Author Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version December 21, 2004, 8:39 a.m. Science FictionMichael Crichton takes a novel approach to global-warming alarmism. By Iain Murray Michael Crichton's new blockbuster novel, State of Fear, begins with sex, violence, and oceanography. It's that sort of book all the way through, mixing the usual adventure novel clichés of beautiful young heroes, indestructible secret agents, and a plot to kill millions alongside hard science, including graphs, footnotes, and words like "aminostratigraphy." As such, the book is half a rip-roaring roller coaster of a read (as Edmund Blackadder would...

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...

Yet many climate scientists have endorsed climate change predictions. Climate records continue to fall as many different regions experience warmer temperatures than they have in centuries. While it is always possible that the experts are wrong, that possibility diminishes with each passing year as evidence mounts for a connection between carbon dioxide emissions and climate warming.

This year I turned 62, and I find I have acquired—along with aches and pains—a perspective on the world that I lacked as a younger person. I now recognize that for most of my life I have felt burdened by highly publicized fears that decades later did not turn out to be true. I was reminded of this when I came across this 1972 statement about climate: “We simply cannot afford to gamble…We cannot risk inaction. Those scientists who [disagree] are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably...

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today. Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to...

Best-selling author Michael Crichton says environmentalists and the media are alarmists when it comes to global warming. So often what you think you know may not be so. And it's a reason I love the book just out from America's top-selling thriller writer, Michael Crichton. He's the man who created the popular TV medical drama "ER," wrote "Jurassic Park," which ranks among the top 10 grossing films of all time, and much more. Crichton's books and movies have grossed more than $4 billion. Now, he's tackling global warming in his latest techno-thriller, "State of Fear." Crichton is an extraordinarily bright...