State of Fear

So what is all the fuss over Michale Crichton's 'State of Fear' book? In short, it seems he had the audacity to question the single most agreed on scientific theory of modern times. Global Warming.

What I find strange about all this is that he did not question global warming. He admits scientific fact shows that it has been warming for 6000 years. The debate he says is not that things are warming but over how much influence man has had in that warming. He doesn't even say that man isn't causing an increase in global warming. He is questioning man's knowledge of the climate. He questions whether we know enough to make the claims that we are. He questions if that knowledge is solid enough to make decisions on. He questions that warming is a bad thing. In short he presents the fact that while every one seems to believe it, the science surrounding it is perhaps not so well known as we think. That there is a gross misunderstanding in the public at large about what exactly the evidence is for global warming about what exactly our level of understanding is.

He dares suggest the Emperor may have no clothes. Or perhaps even worse. He suggests that there is no problem with the Emperors lack of clothes.

I really don't get it. Its not like Crichton vilified global warming other than as a plot device. It isn't like he said it wasn't happening. He didn't even really set up a particularly appealing character set with which to champion his contrary argument. His 'hero' Kenner is a very unsympathetic fellow. He is a know it all, he uses the protagonist without his knowledge, he is an abrupt and a very two dimensional character with about as much going for him as the punching bag actors thinly disguised from their real world counterparts.

His protagonist doesn't go from believer to denouncer, instead he undergoes a transition from an ill informed acolyte of global warming to a skeptic who questions his former unwavering faith based on nothing more than headlines and news reports and limited scientific understanding. His growth as a character is based around learning that there are questions to this widely held belief that may not have been adequately answered. Yet in the end he still believes. He still knows that man is having an impact and that some things need to change and sets off to work in an endeavor to better understand how our world works and what exactly our role is in its ongoing history.

I for one loved his treatment of celebrity proponents of environmental causes and his unmerciful depiction of much of the hypocrisy in which they live. Of people who live in multiple houses that are thousands of square feet in dimension, take highly inefficient charter jet flights and yet drive a 'prius' to be seen as environmentally conscious. The true irony to me is that Crichton's last sermon thinly disguised as dialog is that he isn't saying we need do nothing. He is saying we don't know as much about what is happening as we think. He says that we need to do more to understand. That to question elements of current scientific understanding is not to reject the issue entirely. He seeks to apply more rigorous scientific scrutiny to the issue. To follow solid basic scientific experimentation principles to solidly verify claims to date. If the theory is sound it should stand up to any scrutiny. He is vilified and dismissed by a whole lot of folks and I have read numerous denouncements of his work and yet.... nobody is attacking his claims. They attack him. His credibility. His ability to critically evaluate and present scientific information. They don't show how he is wrong. They gainsay his conclusions. They don't provide references. They say he is dismissing global warming which simply isn't true. The closest thing Crichton comes to saying in conclusion is that the Earth is a Dynamic system and that any expectation that it is should remain in stasis is absurd and it is. Scientific studies of past climate have shown time and time again is that the earths climate has varied through the ages it has done everything except stay the same.... So why is it that change is bad? In the 70's we were worried about global cooling. Now we are worried about global warming. Yet in the past the earth has cooled and warmed many thousands of times. What should we expect? What should be our goal? Stasis? To maintain a ground hogs day climate? One which never changes? The one thing the record shows no indication of is of things staying the same. So in other words the most Unnatural thing would be for us to somehow manage to maintain an equilibrium state in which the earth's climate experienced no significant change.

So lets say we eliminate any sign of Man having an impact on climate change. And yet the earth goes through a natural warming phase which greatly raises the level of the oceans which has happened in the past and by all indications will happen again in the future. Will the catastrophe of sunken coastal centers of civilization be any better if it happens that way? How about if we descend into another ice age? Will it make it all right for lots of folks to die due to climate shifts if it is all 'natural' and not man made? If you ask me climate change isn't a bad thing. It isn't a good thing. Its a fact of our existence whether we are a cause of the change or not and we had best get on with figuring out how to safely control it. Why ? Because either we are going to have to learn how to control the earths climate or we are going to have to figure out how to survive the extremes of earths climate of which mankind has little experience with.