You can go ahead and ignore my post then, if you haven't already.
Apologies for taking almost 15 hours to reply. I'm slacking today, I expect it must be because I have a life!
It's not like I deliberately rattled the whitewolf's cage with a stick, so I wasn't expecting such a vehement post, bordering on a personal attack, from just a single comment.
I don't really want to hijack this thread either; there are already threads on 'State of Fear', as well as global warming, but I need to make some response to your sweeping accusations about the people I associate with, what I think and assume.
I just can't ignore this. You haven't read it but you have a problem with it? It's "anti-environmental?"
What is it you can't ignore? The fact that I can hold an opinion on a book that I haven't read. I haven't read 'Mine Kampf' or any books by David Irving and holocaust denial. I can still have an informed opinion on them and their inaccurate and misleading manipulation of evidence to fit an agenda. I can have an informed opinion on pornography without viewing it myself. Why is this book different?
Between the publication of the Hardback edition and the Paperback edition (which I might have purchased) there was much written about it, both in the Press and online. I also heard reviews on BBC Radio. Literary critics, without any agenda to promote, said that it was quite boring. I have found some of his other attempts to explain scientific principles boring. I just decided that it wasn't for me.
If, rather than assuming things or taking the word of people who espouse an agenda rather than examining truths and reaching educated conclusions, you were to pick up STATE OF FEAR and read it honestly, I think you would be very surprised.
Well, you said it! You don't think that Dr. Crichton has his own agenda? He states it in the book; that he believes that the cause, extent, and threat of climate change is largely unknown and unknowable. That is his own OPINION, and I am entitled to mine. And by the way, he is a Doctor of Medicine, I have an Master of Science. He claims to have spent three years researching this book, but this book is not a peer review of the available science literature. This is still a work of fiction which cherry-picks evidence that suits his case, or worse, to suit a story. That is a 'Da Vinci Code' of science. I'm afraid that the consensus of opinion in the scientific community does not agree with his assumptions, and as you quite rightly said, I would rather believe the real climatologists than someone who clearly "espouses an agenda" backed up with a narrow sampling of the literature.
Secondly, this is an American argument. In Europe, this debate is not politicised, and the book is less relevant. All the main political parties here are in agreement on the need to tackle CO2 emissions, and that it is a major cause of global warming. At the time the book was published, there was still disagreement in the US that there was even global warming at all. We don't have opposing politicians; one who stood himself up as an Environmental Messiah, while the other desperately tried to deny his clear links with ENRON. In Europe, the Oil Industry falls over itself to promote its green credentials, so what, are we all brainwashed over here? There was a Channel 4 documentary, shown in the UK last year, which made similar claims to 'State of Fear', but it was also subsequently taken apart for its one-sided opinion and mis-representation of warming trends.
The real irony here, is that the politicisation of science is a theme in the book itself, but that is not a new development. It is not something brought about by your "shrill green activists", it was always so.
Thirdly, the premise in the book, that an environmental scientist, unable to produce enough real evidence would resort to Eco-terrorism in order to manufacture some, I find offensive.
Finally, I don't believe there is a 'State of Fear'; that the political, legal, and media elites are deliberately creating a state of unreasonable fear about global warming in the general population to keep themselves in power. That's a conspiracy theory. Do you also believe that the CIA was responsible for 9/11? Did you hear that the first passenger aircraft to crash had no windows? Lady Diana Spencer was murdered? The Pyramids were built by aliens from UFO?
Michael Crichton should stick to what he does best.
