A right-winger attacks global warming

[Tinoire]

A right-winger attacks global warming

By Wayne Madsen
Sunday, January 2, 2005


Michael Crichton's new novel, "State of Fear," not only unfairly bashes the global environmental movement but represents yet another example of how multinational corporations and their political allies are invading the popular culture to advance fanatic and lunatic right-wing ideas and agendas. The book demonizes scientists who argue that the world is heading toward cataclysmic weather change unless something is done about the spewing forth of greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere.

Crichton develops a story line that has environmentalists and scientists creating weather-making doomsday machines that wreak havoc on the planet.

Killer hurricanes, towering tidal waves and destructive lightning storms are all meant to prove the scientists' point about the deadly effects of global warming. The environmentalists are the villains. The corporate shills who have been paid big bucks to debunk the global warming community are the good guys. According to Crichton, global warming is a myth.

In today's world of increasing corporate control of almost every facet of our public and private lives, Crichton's screed against the environmental movement should come as no great surprise.

(snip)

Crichton's book, perhaps not coincidentally, comes at a time the Bush administration is blowing off the Arctic meltdown concerns raised in the Arctic Climate Change Assessment initiated by regional Arctic nations and native tribal peoples.

(snip)

Some ludicrous right-wingers have even suggested that eminent global warming experts like Rajendra K. Pachauri are somehow irresponsibly focusing the world's attention away from the war on Islamic terrorism.

(snip)

http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/guests/s_288429.html

[dave123williams]

1. Not a suprise; these guys know who's buttering their bread...

I watched Foxnews the other night; 1/2 hour was all I could take. It was four stories on terrorism, and one on the tsunami.

Pathetic, disgusting and obscene just begins to describe these odious gluttons...Christians, indeed.

[rodeodance]

2. and stupid people will buy and believe this crapo!!

[Tinoire]

3. LMAO!! The Sunday Times - Review

((Well LMAO but extremely disgusted too because of the countless idiots who will believe this crap and proclaim, along with their fuehrer, that they have "sound science" on their side.))


January 02, 2005

Interview: Jasper Gerard meets Michael Crichton
Global warming? Now that really is fiction


A giant wave envelops a tropical island. Victims scramble for survival. The world watches in horror. Michael Crichton has a knack for novels that are of the moment, but never has his fiction collided so savagely and swiftly with reality. Until now, with State of Fear, the Jurassic Park author’s latest blockbuster.
As befits one of the world’s top-selling authors, there is a monster twist in the book. So while the real tsunami was a product of nature, Crichton’s fictional one was started secretly by obsessive environmentalists trying to frighten the world into believing that global warming is about to cause the apocalypse.

For after three years of painstaking research, the father of the techno-thriller believes he has reached a shocking conclusion: global warming is hot air.

(snip)

Two developments persuaded Crichton to abandon his Californian liberal world view. One was in 2002 having a gun held to his head by burglars, who tied up Taylor, his daughter, then aged 13. “They told me not to move and I figured it was best not to argue,” he says. It convinced him we must be tougher on bad guys, be they cat burglars or Saddam Hussein.

His second awakening was seeing that scientists had become so cowed by environmental activists and the media that they dared not proclaim what their research showed: that, so far, it appears global warming is hardly happening.

(snip)

The most remarkable feature of the burglary — in which he managed to untie himself and Taylor, then call the police — was that it occurred in his modest bungalow. There he lived in anonymity, only the astute burglars realising the identity and wealth of its owner.

(snip)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1422283,00.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. He pretends that he's had a 'Road to Damascus' conversion

for his interviews, but he's been a global warming denier for at least the past 3 years. From April 2002:

We need to start remembering that everybody who said that Y2K wasn't a real problem was either shouted down, or kept off the air. The same thing is true now of issues like species extinction and global warming. You never hear anyone say it's not a crisis. I won't go into it, because it might lead to the use of facts, but I'll just mention two reports I speculate you haven't heard about. The first is the report in Science magazine January 18 2001 (Oops! a fact) that contrary to prior studies, the Antarctic ice pack is increasing, not decreasing, and that this increase means we are finally seeing an end to the shrinking of the pack that has been going on for thousands of years, ever since the Holocene era. I don't know which is more surprising, the statement that it's increasing, or the statement that its shrinkage has preceded global warming by thousands of years.

http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote03.html

And when was he ever a liberal? That's just PR - evangelism sounds better if the shill says "I used to be a fool like you, but i have seen the light!"

[Tinoire]

15. Good find! These guys are something else- & absolutely creepy

It's scary to watch how they operate. Black comedy at it's best.

[Sandpiper]

4. Studying corporate junk science for 3 years

Does not make one an expert in climatology.

[opihimoimoi]

5. Refuting evidence is not only delusional but DANGEROUS

[Wilms]

6. Is this the same guy that had 'terrist" flyin' planes into buildings?

So I guess he lays the groundwork.

I'm in the middle of an Oct. 2004 Scientific American article, "Controlling Hurricanes", about moderating and deflecting hurricanes.

Great! So they'll figure out how to do one, blame it on the tree huggers and throw them all into Gitmo.

Better change my avatar.

[fujiyama]

9. I think you're thinking of

Tom Clancy, who has consistantly been a RWer. He used to attack Clinton, liberals, etc etc.

But to his credit, he co wrote or had some part in a recent book along with Anthony Zinni and it was pretty critical of the current administration, and especially the handling of the war.

Chrichton is probably best known for Jurassic Park. A few of his other books made it to the theatre - Disclosure, Rising Sun, Congo, Sphere. I think he was the creator or is the producer of ER as well.

I enjoyed his books when I was like 13. Fortunately I grew out of it.

[oneighty]

14. Chrichton

wrote a short book; sort of an auto-biography. He writes of his experience in anatomy class wherein they (The medical students) are playing football with a human cadaver's liver.

Now being a 'Body Donor' my very own self I found that offensive. I find him offensive.

So I do not care what he thinks.

180

[Bark Bark Bark]

7. Quick Recap of Some of Crichton's Recent Works

"Congo:" Gorillas kill people.
"Rising Sun:" Japanese abuse White people.
"Disclosure:" Women are the worst sexual harassers.
"State of Fear:" Climate change is caused by Liberals.
"Timeline:" Michael Crichton has shit for brains (documented in footnotes).

Remember when Der Reight (accurately) dismissed The Day After Tomorrow as ludicrously impossible garbage? I guess what makes "State of Fear" different is, well, DUH, the political point of view of its author.

I breathlessly await Crichton's take on the Catholic Church, in which a horde of demonic, Leftist children--probably multi-racial--will rape a priest and then frame him.

I mentioned, in another thread a while back (when famed anti-intellectual George F. Will creamed in his jeans publicly about "State of Fear"), that Crichton was forced to add an apologetic foreword to his early novel "The Terminal Man" because in spite of his "exhaustive research," he wrote it under the impression that people suffering epileptic seizures go on bloody murder sprees, stabbing people with butcher knives.

He's always been an idiot, in spite of his image as a master of well-researched sci-fi; now he's just what Karl Rove would call a "useful idiot."

(Crichton fans: sorry if this offends you. You may refuse the pill and go back to eating the steak.)

[Cannikin]

8. Dont forget all those great mutant Frog-dinosaur books.

[Minstrel Boy]

10. Abrupt Climate Change Occurred Worldwide 5,200 Years Ago -

Could It Happen In 21st Century?

Linda Moulton Howe:

December 31, 2004 Columbus, Ohio - As we move into the New Year of 2005, our planet is giving many signals that big ­ and perhaps very sudden ­ climate changes are facing us in the foreseeable future. On December 16th, at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Distinguished Professor Lonnie Thompson from the Geology Department and Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, presented evidence that the ice in the world's glaciers is melting rapidly and he is finding surprises in the melting glacial ice.

...


Professor Thompson is seriously worried that our planet's climate system can be triggered into abrupt changes when various thresholds are reached ­ and then crossed. Right now, the parts per million per volume of carbon dioxide in our planet's atmosphere is 380. From ice core samples taken to study the past climate BEFORE the human industrial age, the natural earth variation in carbon dioxide has been a low of 190 ppm per volume during the ice ages and as high as 280 ppm by volume during the warm periods between ice ages.

That means our world's atmosphere now has 100 ppm by volume MORE than the natural CO2 cycle and the greenhouse gas is increasing every year. What happens when it reaches 400 ppm? Or 500 ppm? Will that trigger a global climate change that is so abrupt that green, growing wetland plants will again be "freeze dried" by sudden cold and snow? But this time, will it be the sun's fault? Or will it be humans ignoring the inevitable destiny of too much carbon dioxide blanketing the Earth?

...

During the Age of Dinosaurs 65 million to 270 million years ago, it's estimated that the CO2 ppm per volume in the Earth's atmosphere was 1,000 ppm to 2,000 ppm. But there was no glacial ice anywhere. As the Earth warms now approaching 400 ppm per volume CO2 and above, Prof. Thompson's great concern is: What is the trigger point, the threshold, that could throw the Earth's climate system into an abrupt change? If ice melting is accelerated, all coastal life on Earth, including humans, animals and plants, are threatened as sea levels rise. If there is an abrupt change as is evident 5,200 years ago, how great would the survival challenges be?

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=839&category=Science

[apple_ridge]

11. Mr Righton is now on his 4th marriage. Typical

repuglican morality.

[tsuki]

12. I cannot believe that the media is publicizing the use of novel to

prove Global Climate Change is not happening.

[Bark Bark Bark]

17. It's Apparently The Hot New Talking Point

I'm in the San Fran area, and local war-whore Debbie Saunders is pinching the exact same loaf as George Will and other punks of Der Reight regarding "State of Fear."

It's like that idiot grade school exercise where you're given an essay to read and then you write the exact same thing 'in your own words.'

[Downtown Hound]

16. So, his incident with two burglars convinced him we need to be

tougher on the bad guys, like Saddam Hussein? Whatever Michael, Iraq is 30 million people. Do we need to be tough on all of them? When you launch an illegal war to get one man, you're punishing a lot of good people as well. What you experienced with your daughter is what we've been inflicting on the Iraqis for years, breaking into their homes, handcuffing their children, killing them by the thousands. Your one incident with some lowlifes doesn't justify you embracing war crimes. Moron.

I used to like Crichton, but his books have sucked for awhile now, and I don't think I'll be giving him any more of my money. You say there's no evidence of global warming? 11,000 dead Europeans in the worst heat wave in their history might disagree with you.

[depakid]

18. Hard to say this is any worse than some DU'rs

persisting in their absurd (and equally ideological) earthquake claptrap.

Crichton, of course, is just trying to stir up "controversy" to sell books- something that he's proven quite adept at.

Anyone who takes him seriously has rocks in their head... not to say there aren't tons of people on the right (and unfortunately many more than I thought on the left) who have rocks in their heads. There are- and people like Crichton know it.

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that this phenominon of disrespecting science (for whatever reason) is't a product of right or left- it's a product of AMERICA and over 20 years of divesting in education- especially the 'hard' sciences.