The Only Thing to Fear is Fear Itself

The subject today is about science, not technology.

You see, I recently read State of Fear by Michael Crichton, and am feeling somewhat vindicated. Based on my analytical nature, together with a healthy dose of skepticism, I have long questioned all the doom and gloom pseudo-science about global warming from our news media, especially when they predict global catastrophes like the state of Florida being submerged in 50 years by melting icecaps. The basis of my skepticism comes from reading about the extreme climate changes that have occurred on our planet over the last few million years, and most recently, by books like State of Fear.

We are actually at the end of the fourth major glacial epoch; the current one having gone on for a million years. At the height of the current ice age, ice as deep as two miles blanketed North America as far south as St. Louis and Europe as far south as France. Given that such extreme global climate changes occur naturally (i.e. not man made), it is ludicrous to me that “scientists” can extrapolate 100 years of temperature readings into a global climate trend that they can definitively tie to human causes. Hell, for all we know, maybe the magnetic poles are fixing to reverse again as they have done 9 times in the last 3.6 million years. If that should happen, no doubt some scientist eager to get a research grant will postulate that we have taken too much iron out of the ground and redistributed it willy nilly.

Apparently Mr. Crichton shares my skepticism. As a student of science and it’s impact on society, he actually spent three years researching every scientific journal and publication he could find on the subject and concluded that the “theory” of global warming was nothing more than that, and more importantly there was a great body of data that contradicts this so-called theory – e.g. data that shows that Antarctica is actually getting colder, not warmer, and the Ross Ice shelf that environmentalists like to focus on only represents about 1% of the mass of ice in Antarctica. Also the mean temperature of North America has either stayed the same or decreased over the past 100 years, suggesting that we Americans were right in denouncing the Kyoto treaty.

After a great deal of study, Mr. Crichton has adopted the risky position of taking on both the environmental establishment and the media in his latest novel. It’s nice to come across influential people that actually have something important to say, as opposed to self-important yahoos like Tom Cruise.

After reading his book and noting the 175 or so listings in the bibliography, references to scientific journals and other publications that he studied on the subject, my respect for the man has risen considerably above what I would have for a normal novelist. Although I understand that a novelist has a responsibility to do research and fact checking, especially if the subject is technical in nature, the depth of Mr. Crichton’s study is very impressive. He even goes to the trouble of summarizing his personal views on the subjects covered in the book, in order to clairfy the points he is trying to make here. This is the first “novel” I have ever read that has over thirty pages of scientific bibliography and comments.

His premise is that there are a great number of organizations that benefit from manipulating the truth about global crises, and that the whole issue of global warming is a complex, perpetuating media snowball ranging from subtle subterfuge to outright lies. He reminds the reader that the number of people who believe in something is totally irrelevant to whether it is true or not. If the science doesn’t support the theory, then all you have is a lot of people who believe in something that may not be true. As he says “an educated guess is still just a guess.” This is clearly a area that he feels strongly about and is not just another novel to him.

Suffice it to say that until someone can accurately predict the weather for at least 20 years running (no one has succeeded in this to date), I remain convinced that the global warming “phenomenon” is 1) little more than a construct formed by carefully selected scientific data that supports the premise while ignoring all the conflicting data, 2) being used as a tool by certain disingenuous scientists to gain exposure and grant money, and 3) a handy emotionally charged issue being abused by environmentalists to grow their power and organizational clout, and loved by the media because it fuels peoples fears and sells newspapers and TV time.

The most interesting part of this whole issue is that virtually no one really knows if a slight increase in global temperature over a hundred or a thousand years is necessarily bad. Who can say that it won’t change global weather patterns and bring more moisture to Africa to support more farming and save millions of lives? Who’s to say that a 2 degree increase in temperature in one part of the globe won’t be offset by a 2 degree decrease in other areas that is beneficial?

Until someone develops a computer climate model that is even slightly accurate, I choose to think that all this BS about global warming is nothing more than hot air.