State of Fear

state of fear
Originally uploaded by coolmel.

In the thirty-five-odd since the environmental movement came into existence, science has undergone a major revolution. This revolution has brought new understanding of nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, chaos theory, catastrophe theory. It has transformed the way we think about evolution and ecology. Yet these no-longer-new ideas have hardly penetrated the thinking of environmental activists, which seems oddly fixed in the concepts and the rhetoric of the 1970’s. – Michael Crichton, from Author’s Message, State of Fear

Finished reading State of Fear last Christmas. The story and plot is far from Crichton's best works, but this novel is arguably more controversial and ground-breaking than Jurassic Park. It is very ballsy. In it Crichton raised some very important criticisms on the theory of global warming in particular and environmental organizations in general. It's interesting to see what will be the response of environmentalists. But whatever their response is, they at least have to address the 170+ (academic) references included in the bibliography and the numerous charts and footnotes that Crichton used in the novel to dispel "global" warming.

I have to admit, Crichton did put some dings on my own layman's notion. Then I opened the paper the next day and read about a series of tsunamis that hit Asia.

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ADDENDUM:

01/03/2005 - For those who want to dig deeper into the global warming rabbit hole....

Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion - rebutts Crichton's criticism on global warming. Lots of very informative links in the comment section. (see also Part II).

Aliens Cause Global Warming by Michael Crichton

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.