I have recently finished the novel "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. While not one of his best works, it certainly got me to think a little harder about how we look at our environment, and if we really know as much as we think we do. I believe that he brings up some interesting points, and you will have had to read the book to understand where's he's going with a couple of them, but I think he's got a good message overall for us:
I know it's a little long, but worth the read:
Quote:
A novel such as State of Fear, in which so many divergent views are expressed, may lead the reader to wonder where, exactly, the author stands on these issues. I have bee reading environmental texts for three years, in itself a hazardous undertaking. But I have had an opportunity to look at a lot of data, and to consider many points of view. I conclude:
* We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it. In every debate, all sides overstate the extent of existing knowledge and its degree of certainty.
* Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause.
* We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that began about 1850, as we emerged from a four-hundred-year old cold spell known as the "Little Ice Age."
* Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon.
* Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made.
* Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, de facto proof that nobody knows. But if I had to guess --- the only thing anyone is doing, really --- I would guess the increase will be 0.812436 degrees C. There is no evidence that my guess about the state of the world one hundred years from now is any better or worse than anyone else's. (We can't "assess" the future, nor can we "predict" it. These are euphemisms. We can only guess. And informed guess is just a guess.)
* I suspect that part of the observed surface warming will ultimately be attributable to human activity. I suspect that the principal human effect will come from land use, and that the atmospheric component will be minor.
* Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.
* I think for anyone to believe in impending resource scarcity, after two hundred years of such false alarms, is kind of weird. I don't know whether such a belief today is best ascribed to ignorance of history, sclerotic dogmatism, unhealthy love of Malthus, or simple pigheadedness, but it is evidently a hardly perennial in human calculation.
* There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban horse transportation in the early twentieth century.
* I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don't think we have to worry about them.
* The current near-hysterical preoccupation with safety is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism. Public education is desperately needed.
* I conclude that most environmental "principles" (such as sustainable development or the precautionary principle) have the effect of preserving the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the developing world. It is a nice way of saying, "We got ours and we don't want you to get yours, because you'll cause too much pollution."
* I believe people are will intentioned. But I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.
* I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes, Ideologues and zealots don't.
* In the thirty-five-odd years 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 rhetoric of the 1970's.
* We haven't the foggiest notion how to preserve what we term "wilderness," and we had better study it in the field and learn how to do so. I see no evidence that we are conducting such research in a humble, rational and systematic way. I therefore hold little hope for wilderness management in the twenty-first century. I blame environmental organizations every bit as much as developers and strip miners. There is no difference in outcomes between greed and incompetence.
* We need a new environmental movement, with new goals and new organizations. We need more people working in the field, in the actual environment, and fewer people behind computer screens. We need more scientists and many fewer lawyers.
* We cannot hope to manage a complex system such as the environment through litigation. We can only change its state temporarily --- usually by preventing something --- with eventual results that we cannot predict and ultimately cannot control.
* Nothing is more inherently political than our shared physical environment, and nothing is more ill served by allegiance to a single political party. Precisely because the environment is shared it cannot be managed by one faction according to its own economic or aesthetic preferences. Sooner or later, the opposing faction will take power, and previous policies will be reversed. Stable management of the environment requires recognition that all preferences have their place: snowmobilers and fly fisherman, dirt bikers and hikers, developers and preservationists. These preferences are at odds, and their incompatibility cannot be avoided. But resolving incompatible goals is a true function of politics.
* We desperately need a nonpartisan, blinded funding mechanism to conduct research to determine appropriate policy. Scientists are only too aware whom they are working for. Those who fund research --- whether a drug company, a government agency, or an environmental organization --- always have a particular outcome in mind. Research funding is almost never open-ended or open-minded. Scientists know that continued funding depends on delivering the results the funders desire. As a result, environmental organization "studies" are every bit as biased and suspect as industry "studies." Government "studies" are similarly biased according to who is running the department or administration at the time. No faction should be given a free pass.
* I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
* I personally experience a profound pleasure being in nature. My happiest days each year are those I spend in wilderness. I wish natural environments to be preserved for future generations. I am not satisfied they will be preserved in sufficient quantities, or with sufficient skill. I conclude that the "exploiters of the environment" include environmental organizations, government organizations, and big business. All have equally dismal track records.
* Everybody has an agenda. Except me.
Miguel, a most interesting read. I am not sure I agree with his point that " I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don't think we have to worry about them." However, I can see agreeing with him on most of the other points he made.
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"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read these books." Mark Twain
Yeah, I suspect they'll be less people in the world by 2100, but not by choice.... but by disaster. The "I don't think we have to worry about them" statement is of course business as usual. No one ever does worry about them. They'll be living in the "mess" we left behind.
Sad, but all too true, Phil. At the rate we are going, there will be little space left in the Greater St.John's/Mount Pearl/CBS region, and huge areas of abandonned areas in NL.
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"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read these books." Mark Twain
In Michael Crichton's work, the two are intimately connected.
Chris Mooney; January 18, 2005
NOTE: ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS
Michael Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, is a novel in name only. More accurately described, it's a work of thinly disguised political commentary, in which a wildly implausible plot--eco-terrorists supplant Al Qaeda as the leading global menace, unveiling dastardly weather modification schemes to convince the public of a nonexistent global warming threat--serves as an excuse for a string of Socratic-style dialogues about climate science. Since Crichton's characters repeatedly find themselves jetting across the globe to stop the latest eco-terrorist menace (blowing off parts of Antarctica, unleashing a tsunami, and so on), they have plenty of time in transit to question the reality of human caused global warming. The plot contrivance of a pending climate change lawsuit--abandoned once its proponents realize they don't have a case--provides yet another didactic opportunity for the author. When the legal team cross-examines one of our heroes about climate science, Crichton seizes the chance to insert temperature trend diagrams and copious footnotes into the text.
All of these "educational" dialogues take the same format: A smart-guy character, holding forth in technical banter bearing little resemblance to spoken English, runs rings around a character who holds misguided beliefs that he or she cannot defend with reference to the scientific literature. These erroneous beliefs all hinge on the notion that the earth is warming significantly, that this has resulted at least in part from human activities, and that the consequences have begun to make themselves felt and could grow quite severe over time--a robust mainstream scientific view, although apparently not one shared by Crichton. Hilariously, at the end of his book Crichton states: "A novel such as State of Fear, in which so many divergent views are expressed, may lead the reader to wonder where, exactly, the author stands on these issues…." As if it wasn't obvious.
Crichton's central smart guy is Richard John Kenner, a scientist who heads the fictional MIT Center for Risk Analysis while doubling as a secret agent who likes to bring lawyers and hot babes along on his adventures. Kenner seems a composite of Richard Lindzen, the famed MIT prof and global warming "skeptic," John Graham, who headed the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis before joining the Bush administration (see here for a previous column about what Graham has been up to), and Vin Diesel. In essence, Kenner's character serves as a vessel into which Crichton can pour his agenda-driven reading of the scientific evidence. Here's an example of how Kenner talks:
There are one hundred sixty thousand glaciers in the world, Ted. About sixty-seven thousand have been inventoried but only a few have been studied with care. There is mass balance data extending five years or more for only seventy-nine glaciers in the entire world. So, how can you say they're all melting?
Try reading that aloud, and then ask yourself whether real people, even real scientists, speak this way. Though perhaps intended to make Kenner seem smart, such language only makes him seem fake.
Nevertheless, Kenner excels at getting equally fictitious lawyers and Hollywood celebrities to see the error of their ways. But for some reason, Crichton never has his mouthpiece argue against another scientist who reads the evidence on climate change differently and can cite literature to back his or her view as well. In our world--the real world--you can find a small army of these. I have interviewed many of them, heard others lecture, and met still more at conferences. In Crichton's universe, however, they seem not to exist.
Crichton's scientific footnotes--which he promises "are real"--similarly misrepresent reality. In the text of State of Fear as well as in its 20 pages of citations, Crichton glosses over a high profile 2001 National Academy of Sciences report entitled Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Key Questions, which opens with the following passage:
Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century. Secondary effects are suggested by computer model simulations and basic physical reasoning. These include increases in rainfall rates and increased susceptibility of semi-arid regions to drought. The impacts of these changes will be critically dependent on the magnitude of the warming and the rate with which it occurs.
The mention of "human-induced warming and associated sea level rises" is particularly interesting, because Crichton seeks to debunk concerns about rising sea levels. Crichton's footnotes also exclude statements by the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, which broadly agree with NAS. No wonder real life climate experts, of the sort that Crichton excommunicates from his "novel," have scathingly critiqued his depiction of their field and the level of understanding it has achieved.
As these examples suggest, Crichton's skewed reading of the scientific literature leads him into an utter abandonment of literary verisimilitude. For this author, at least, bad science fuels bad fiction. Nowhere does that shortcoming become more apparent than in Crichton's inability to capture human character. His environmentalists are total creeps, and not just that. They're nefarious schemers, who won't even stop at mass murder to achieve their greater goals. As one eco-terrorist puts it, shortly before Kenner silences him with a bullet: "Casualties are inevitable in accomplishing social change. History tells us that."
Sorry, but I've hung out with plenty of environmental activists (although no eco-terrorists), and they're just not as Crichton describes them. They have many flaws--naïve idealism, political impotence perhaps--but they're not cold-blooded killers. They would never dream of causing the types of disasters they're pledged to work against. In Crichton's fictional universe, however, global warming concerns are all made up. Therefore, environmentalists must transform into outright evildoers--how else to account for their real life behavior? Crichton should have realized, from the unreality of his characters, that he'd been tugged in the wrong direction.
The author's depictions of journalists have similar flaws. In State of Fear, reporters exist solely as environmentalist lapdogs. Crichton makes this plain in a scene in which his characters find themselves watching a newscast:
They cut to a younger man, apparently the weatherman. "Thanks, Terry. Hi, everybody. If you're a longtime resident of the Grand Canyon State, you've probably noticed that our weather is changing, and scientists have confirmed that what's behind it is our old culprit, global warming. Today's flash flood is just one example of the trouble ahead--more extreme weather conditions, like floods and tornadoes and droughts--all as a result of global warming."
Sanjong nudged Evans, and handed him a sheet of paper. It was a printout of a press release from the NERF [an environmental group] website. Sanjong pointed to the text: "…scientists agree there will be trouble ahead: more extreme weather events, like floods and tornadoes and droughts, all as a result of global warming."
Evans said, "This guy's just reading a press release?"
"That's how they do it, these days," Kenner said. "They don't even bother to change a phrase here and there. They just read the copy outright. And of course, what he's saying is not true."
In fact, no self-respecting journalist would take an environmentalist press release and copy it verbatim. Members of the mainstream national media do view environmental groups as self-interested, and check their claims with independent scientists. What Crichton can't admit, or can't stand, is that in reality these scientists often agree with the environmental groups.
In State of Fear, however, Crichton is God, and his views become the book's laws of nature. That's never more apparent than in Crichton's numerous "conversion" scenes, in which characters who had previously believed in the dogma of global warming suddenly see the light. At one point in the novel, two such figures confide in one another following a legal cross examination:
"I mean, when I gave those answers, I wasn't saying what I really think. I'm, uh…I'm asking some--I'm changing my mind about a lot of this stuff."
"Really?"
"Yes," he said, speaking softly. "Those graphs of temperature, for instance. They raise obvious questions about the validity of global warming."
She nodded slowly. Looking at him closely.
He said, "You, too?"
She continued to nod.
Let's face it: Such writing is pure porn for global warming deniers, in much the same way that fictional accounts of UFO abduction skeptics converting into true believers titillate UFO fans.
In the end, State of Fear bears little resemblance to Crichton's most successful sci-fi thrillers, like Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain. Instead, it's far more reminiscent of Disclosure, Crichton's perverse attempt to address the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace by focusing on a case in which a woman harasses a man, rather than vice-versa. Similarly, in State of Fear the specter of a vast environmentalist conspiracy--a problem even less significant than sexual harassment of men by their female superiors--gets trumpeted while real concerns (climate change, for instance) get scoffed at. By the book's end, one can only ask: What planet is Michael Crichton living on? Because this one is clearly getting warmer.
...bout right.
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Paul, sorry, but my son has a friend name Phil O'Keefe.
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"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read these books." Mark Twain
Although I have to agree with many of the points Crichton make (quoted in the OP), this one:
Quote:
* I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don't think we have to worry about them.
is pretty hard to accept (I wonder why he buried it in amongst so many other reasonable, and even obvious, ones).
Given that wilderness has been rapidly disappearing for most of the last millennium, and continues to do so at an accelerating rate, and given that the human population continues to grow at an accelerating rate, the only way in which Crichton's prediction could come to pass is that a sudden and dramatic reversal in both of these long-established trends occurs.
The only way I could see such a thing happening is as a result of a catastrophic human die-off or sudden, global reproductive failure. In such a case, while any surviving people might 'enjoy' more wilderness, the complete collapse of the global economy that would result would likely force survivors for the next couple of centuries to spend their lives building a new global economy, rather than 'enjoying the increased wilderness' so they certainly won't be richer in the economic sense.
I agree with Chris Mooney's analysis: the average American is tired of hearing about how their lifestyle is threatening the future of life on earth, so a pseudo-scientific story arguing that "hey, scientists don't know what their talking about" is going to sell better than sex. Crichton is just cynically capitalizing on the wide-spread social miasma surrounding science and pervasive environmental-fatigue.
I've never much cared for his writing anyway, but I'm sure he'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Bryanc I think he hedged his bets by going to the next century.
It's really the next 30-50 years that the crunch is on vis a vie population.
Beyond that the drop is quite severe with Japan looking at halving the population and a great deal of focus on improved environmental friendly or even restorative technologies.
How he can ignore the situation with say the tiger and the larger African mammals entirely is beyond me.
The big issue I have is that the underlying message seems to be our impacting the globe is of little consequence and we really don't know if we are and that's outright horse dung. The other message - we don't know enough so whatever we do is useless.
I'd say the restoration of some of the whale species shows him very wrong.
Whatever "good points" he raises are over shadowed by that...."call to inaction"
Also I noticed the pat on his own back about "people willing to change their viewpoints".
It says to me he thought he was wrong in the past and now thinks he has "seen the light" about the environment and human impact.
When is the next flip flop due??.........next publishers advance perhaps??
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I wonder if ehmac will warn of the above quoted postings... http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/
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