Review - State of Fear

Occasionally, I get the urge to write a review on Amazon.com... I will post a few of them on this blog.

State of Fear
by Michael Crichton

"Nobody knows that I'm wrong," said Crichton...., October 1, 2007

...on the Charlie Rose show earlier this year (the video is on Crichton's official site). Nobody knows that the earth won't warm only 8/10ths of one degree Celsius, as Crichton predicts - no, he doesn't predict, he guesses. "We can't `assess' the future, nor can we `predict' it....We can only guess. An informed guess is just a guess." (from the Bibliography section of the novel).

It seems that many people don't get it - Crichton does not deny global warming. He believes the earth is getting warmer and that some of the warming (particularly the carbon dioxide increase) is due to human activity. I think a lot of people are upset just because he doesn't believe it's "catastrophic", he doesn't believe that entire populations switching to hybrid cars would save the world (and the world does not need to be saved!). He's not buying in to the popular consensus, and he proves that he doesn't need to. He's researched the matter like the brilliant scientist he is. Catastrophes are great for science fiction books and movies, such as Jurassic Park. State of Fear is also science fiction (the storyline), but its scientific facts are real and it's obvious that Crichton did a great deal of research. What other novelists use footnotes and have an immense bibliography section at the end of the book? His critics argue that he "picks and chooses" his data to support his "agenda." But who doesn't? Researchers do it, Al Gore does it, politicians do it, the media does it. And really, even when students write research papers in school, they have to pick and choose their data.

Crichton is very logical, so I still don't understand what's so controversial or "right-wing" about his major points:

-No one knows how much of the warming is natural
-No one knows how much of the warming is due to human activity
-No one can predict the future climate more than 10 days in advance

Crichton reminds us that current weather predictions are rarely made more than 10 days in advance, and even then they can be wrong. Computer models can't predict El Ninos correctly either - "and if you can't predict El Ninos, the predictive value of your model in other areas is suspect." Just like in court, if it is revealed that the defendant lied about something, how can the jury believe anything else he/she says?

The character of Ted Bradley embodies the current celeb/media obsession with halting global warming (an arrogant notion, according to Crichton, that mere humans can affect the complex atmosphere of an entire planet - more precisely, "a coupled non-linear chaotic system" which is impossible to predict). Bradley, along with other limousine liberals in the book, brag to each other about buying hybrid cars for their staff, but they are traveling in a private jet during this discussion ("Just by making this trip, they're generating more pollution per capita than most people on the planet will generate in a year."), and SUV limos are ready to meet them at the airport. I know some celebrities do practice what they preach, but the majority does not. It reminds me of that activist who set fire to a Hummer dealership's fleet a few years ago. Afterwards, she hopped on her private jet to travel somewhere. How inconsistent.

I've been a Crichton fan for about 13 years now, and I only read the book because he wrote it - global warming never interested me too much - however, I dislike SUVs and think they're wasteful and unnecessary for the most part, and I try to conserve energy, water, and gasoline. I wouldn't mind paying a carbon tax. And Crichton certainly isn't against conservation and carbon taxes either - he wants to improve our environment - he just doesn't define global warming as an emergency and doesn't think we should be spending so much money on this unpredictable theory as opposed to AIDS and other true emergencies. But anyway, I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would, particularly the parts in Antarctica (which is getting colder, by the way). And I respect Crichton even more as a writer because he dared to write this. After reading this book, I am thoroughly convinced that I don't need to worry about the ice sheets melting. The sky is not falling. But if it does, I doubt that humans could do anything about it.