- What Crichton Says about Global Warming in “State of Fear.”
Early in the book, Crichton has one of his characters define global warming as “the heating up of the earth from burning fossil fuels.†(p. 80) Not so, says another character, who defines global warming as follows:
... global warming is the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases are causing an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere because of the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’ (p. 81, italics in the original)
The second definition is correct. “Global warming†really is only a theory, not a fact, and the words Crichton chose to italicize are all key terms in the scientific debate over whether the theory is correct or not. Over the course of the book, other characters document the following flaws in the theory of global warming:
* most of the warming in the past century occurred before 1940, before CO2 emissions could have been a major factor (p. 84);
* temperatures fell between 1940 and 1970 even as CO2 levels increased (p. 86);
* temperature readings from reporting stations outside the U.S. are poorly maintained and staffed and probably inaccurate; those in the U.S., which are probably more accurate, show little or no warming trend (pp. 88-89);
* “full professors from MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Duke, Virginia, Colorado, UC Berkeley, and other prestigious schools ... the former president of the National Academy of Sciences ... will argue that global warming is at best unproven, and at worst pure fantasy" (p. 90);
* temperature sensors on satellites report much less warming in the upper atmosphere (which the theory of global warming predicts should warm first) than is reported by temperature sensors on the ground (p. 99);
* data from weather balloons agree with the satellites (p. 100);
* “No one can say for sure if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds,†yet cloud cover plays a major role in global temperatures (p. 187);
* Antarctica “as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker†(p. 193, sources listed on p. 194);
* The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica has been melting for the past 6,000 years (p. 195, p. 200-201); “Greenland might lose its ice pack in the next thousand years†(p. 363);
* The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is “a huge group of bureaucrats and scientists under the thumb of bureaucrats,†and its 1995 report was revised “after the scientists themselves had gone home†(p. 245-246);
* James Hansen’s predictions of global warming during a Congressional committee hearing in 1988, which launched the global warming scare, were wrong by 200 percent (.35 degrees Celsius over the next 10 years versus the actual increase of .11 degrees); in 1998, Hansen said long-term predictions of climate are impossible (pp. 246-247);
* there has been no increase in extreme weather events (.e.g., floods, tornadoes, drought) over the past century or in the past 15 years; computer models used to forecast climate change do not predict more extreme weather (p. 362, 425-426);
* temperature readings taken by terrestrial reporting stations are rising because they are increasingly surrounded by roads and buildings which hold heat, the “urban heat island†effect (p. 368-369); methods used to control for this effect fail to reduce temperatures enough to offset it (p. 369-376);
* changes in land use and urbanization may contribute more to changes in the average ground temperature than “global warming†caused by human emissions (p. 383, 388);
* temperature data are suspect because they have been adjusted and manipulated by scientists who expect to find a warming trend (p. 385-386);
* carbon dioxide has increased a mere 60 parts per million since 1957, a tiny change in the composition of the atmosphere (p. 387);
* increased levels of CO2 act a fertilizer, promoting plant growth and contributing to the shrinking of the Sahara desert (p. 421);
* the spread of malaria is unaffected by global warming (pp. 421-422, footnotes on 422);
* sufficient data exist to measure changes in mass for only 79 of the 160,000 glaciers in the world (p. 423);
* the icecap on Kilimanjaro has been melting since the 1800s, long before human emissions could have influenced the global climate, and satellites do not detect a warming trend in the region (p. 423); deforestation at the foot of the mountain is the likely explanation for the melting trend (p. 424);
* sea levels have been rising at the rate of 10 to 20 centimeters (four to eight inches) per hundred years for the past 6,000 years (p. 424);
* El Niños are global weather patterns unrelated to global warming and on balance tend to be beneficial by extending growing seasons and reducing the use of heating fuels (p. 426);
* the Kyoto Protocol would reduce temperatures by only 0.04 degrees Celsius in the year 2100 (p. 478);
* a report by scientists published in Science concludes “there is no known technology capable of reducing [global] carbon emissions ... totally new and undiscovered technology is required†(p. 479);
* change, not stability, is the defining characteristic of the global climate, with naturally occurring events (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis) much more likely to affect climate than anything humans do (p. 563); and
* computer simulations are not real-world data and cannot be relied on to produce reliable forecasts (p. 566).
One character in State of Fear concludes, “The threat of global warming is essentially nonexistent. Even if it were a real phenomenon, it would probably result in a net benefit to most of the world†(p. 407).
FOr more info, see http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16260
…months on end of gloomy rain. If we ever loose our winter snowpack in the higher elevations we will screwed for sure. That spells DROUGHT. So far most winters have been cold enough for the higher mountain elevations to receive their winter snows…but it’s been barely.