To a headier topic. I suffered through Michael Crichtons work, "State of fear", last week. In it he expounds, voiced mostly in a superhuman MIT academic turned superagent ( an interesting psychological subject itself), on the evils of environmentalism and climate change. He also adds appendices and editorials at the back of the book with his views on the entire subject. I will avoid the book itself, for it is mostly stereotyped characters and opinion disguised as storyline. It will appeal nicely to paranoid rightwingers with caricatured actors and lawyers and evil earth-first types committing murder and mayhem.

Crichton is often looked highly upon due to his credentialed M.D. status and obviously widely read scientific background. Lately he has become the darling of the flat earth -no environmental crisis crowd due to this book and his public appearances denouncing any environmental problems. He also castigates environmentalists for stopping development in poorer countries, essentially calling them theives and liars for using the tools of development while stopping or berating others from doing so.


First, Crichton has never been a practicing scientist, his books being fiction based on theoretical science. His MD is from over 30 years ago, hardly a qualification to engage in peer based criticism of complex a subject as climate change theory and modeling. Within his critique,( and this is risky because I am actually treating his opinion as worthy of scientific criticism), he performs the greatest error of any science: selection and omission, or simply put, the failure to include and deal with all available evidence. He omits what counters his idea, and brings forth what supports it. He then attacks the entire subject as being based on groupthink and the need for scientists to get grants. His main evidence is that some locations are cooler, or have shown a cooling trend within some recent periods. This, of course, does not deal with all the other places that have shown to be getting warmer, in fact much warmer, over vastly larger areas, or that many of these reading coincide with predictions of various models. Finally is his general theory that land use changes account for most temperature increases, there is no crisis, ddt got a bad name, species are not going extinct, old growth is bad, and in 100 years the world will be a better place.

Drivel. Plain and simple.

Ideas are powerful. And some are dangerous. This is one of Crichtons main themes in the book. His argument throughout is the environmental crisis is a creation of propaganda now fed by momentum and money. On no page does he deal with the quality and quantity of forests, the numbers of species gone or going extinct, the numbers and amount of toxins, the disappearance of once vast reserves like the cod of the Grand Banks, or any other actual details. This is a figment all of our imagination, and specifically that of a rich Hollywood elite and scientists bent on making a living through our tax dollars. One of his characters exclaims that that the natives, by burning, were expressing the knowledge that "old forests sucked". This is frightening, because I thought perhaps as an MD, he might have a limited understanding of biology and ecology. Old forests "suck" only for certain species and only for certain human uses. Biologically, they are just as rich as any ecosystem, only for different species. As far as human uses, it depends on whom is using them and when and what for. Life itself grants no judgement. Often, it is the indigenous who cry the greatest when the world is plowed over by the industrial.

Nowhere does he leap farther than in his criticism of a mysterious cabal of environmentalists denying the poor of the world the right to develop. The poor of the world often wish to develop, or merely to continue on with their lives without the harassment of our major corporations, who extract, pollute, exploit and drive the locals off their land. If any one group denies the poor of the world, it is the right wing who Crichton aligns himself with. Represented by corporations, the WTO, and other similar organizations, it is they who do not develop for the sake of people, but extract and exploit for profit. Witness the places with great resources. Somehow the profits never make it to the locals. It is the right wing in this country who refuse to allow funding for simple birth control, or lower cost aids drugs. Perhaps Crichton should avail himself of the evidence and speak out about these subjects.

Next Posting: Bjorn Lomborg, one of Crichtons favorite victims.