A Book Worth Re-Reading

A few days I ago I picked up my old copy of Michael Crichton's book State of Fear and started reading it again. Keeping in mind it was originally published in 2004, I was amazed at how well the book's premise and information has held up.

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When I first read it I was a warmist, so some of the scenarios he presented seemed preposterous to me: Scientists being pressured to downplay their findings if it contradicted the global warming religion; the threat of grant money being withheld if papers didn't conform to the climate change dogma; environmental groups so committed to this relatively new religion they would do anything to make their case; the references Crichton footnoted at the bottom of many pages that are still true today but dismissed by alarmists; the media's seemingly unquestioning love affair with ecological doom and their pitiful fact checking; and of course money. Money was such a central theme in the book it was like having a mute character on many of the pages. At the time I thought it was a bit overblown, a writer's runaway imagination, but in the intervening years Crichton's prescient plot points have become all too real. Putting aside the eco-terrorist plot that also threaded itself throughout the novel and kept the reader turning the pages, the basic tenants Crichton put forward are still true. Data is manipulated and non-conforming data thrown out. Scientists rely on computer models in making their proclamations. There are no checks and balances in climate research. The idea of double-blind control groups seems to have eluded climatologists. Greenland and Iceland ice and glaciers have been expanding. Same with Antarctica. The Arctic is recovering quite nicely. Of the 400,000-plus glaciers on the planet, only a hundred are so are measured, and they are usually the ones most accessible by man and civilization. The list is endless. The science of climate change has become such a corrupt institution is it any wonder so many people don't consider it a priority or trust what they hear on the news? Fox News gets lambasted because it's new's director sent out a memo insisting on giving balance to both the warmist and the skeptic's sides. The left-wing media promptly jumped down the channel's gullet upon learning of this "radical" idea of giving equal time to both sides and NOT, as journalists, broadcasting your own conclusions. Cap and Tax didn't fail in a Democratically controlled congress because it couldn't pass. It failed because Democrats wanted to get re-elected and their constituents made it clear they'd had enough. Third-world countries want the richer nations to pony up the cash for possible problems they might have and for weather events that might occur. It doesn't matter that those same weather events have been happening for thousands of years. Someone must pay. The only thing missing is someone reading passages from The Crucible. Today we now see all the doomsters downplaying their previous noisome threats to our planet that simply aren't coming true. Sea level rise has been revised so many times that we've now gone from a future Waterworld to a sub-Saharan wasteland. Instead of the snow-less, deserted ski resorts, we now hear from the warmists that global warming actually causes more snow. And more cold. Temperature-measuring stations are placed on heat-trapping pavement. Temperature-measuring satellites break down so often NASA has boilerplate press releases when a new one starts acting up. Then denies it uses the data. Temperature data is mixed and mingled from a multitude of sources, fed into computer models programmed by the climatologists who collected the data, so does it come as a great shock when they announce we're living in a "dramatically" warming world. Is it any wonder the public is confused? As we approach 2011, I have a recommendation for alarmists and skeptics alike. Pick up a copy of State of Fear and give it a good reading. Or re-reading. It's now a six-year-old book but so far most of Crichton's plot points are coming true. I think it will hold up in 2011 and beyond. For alarmists it may give you something to think about other than what vested interests would have you believe. And for skeptics? If you're looking for something to jump start the New Year amid all the bleak, warmist news coverage, this might be better than the traditional glass of champagne. I realize I've only covered a # amount of the warmist predictions that didn't come true and the realist's predictions that did. Feel free to share your own observations in the comments below. Thomas Richard is Editor of Climate Change Fraud (CCF) a site dedicated to debunking, reviewing, and responding to the shrill cries of the media and the global warming zealots who have embraced anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as an eco-religion and not as a scientific endeavor for answers. This site does not dispute that global temperatures have increased, on average less than 1°C, over the past 100 years. What CCF does seek to do is repudiate the consensus that the cause is man-made and the principal culprit is CO2, through facts, articles, and other sources not readily available in the mainstream media. One goal is to deconstruct the AGW myth propagated by ex-VP-turned-green activist Al Gore and the highly political IPCC. Thomas can be reached at: info@climatechangefraud.com

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