State of Fear
I used to be a big fan of Michael Crichton, after reading his 2nd latest novel, State of Fear, I am very disappointed. I don’t need to further introduce him, he was the famous writer who wrote Jurassic Park.
On the book, State of Fear, he misled the reader and tried to tell us, Global Warming is "NOT"existed!
He spent the whole book to talk about his theory! He even provided charts and references to proof it, but the more he talked about it, the more doubtful I am.
It really makes me wondering if he is actually working for Bush. Bush is the one who does not believe in global warming. Why, it is all because of “oil”, what else? If everyone in the world tries to “save” the environment by not using/burning any fossil fuel/oil, how could Bush and his allies (the Saudi Arabia) gain profits?
During the reading, I was confused and wondering if anyone debated about this book. I surfed through internet and I found out an Environmental Group called, Environmental Defense, did write an article against him. If you are interested, see below.
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Separating Fact from Fiction in Crichton's 'State of Fear'
Posted on: 03/21/2005
With State of Fear, novelist Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain) has written an entertaining book where the scientific debate over global warming provides the backdrop for his hero's heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat struggle against evil and his search for love. Like other writers who take on science themes, often exaggerating the data for dramatic effect, Crichton betrays an incomplete knowledge of the technical issues and the full dimensions of what is a very robust body of evidence and analysis. Wittingly or not, he is prone to selective use of data, indiscriminate acceptance of dubious sources and just plain errors of fact.
Dispelling Crichton's Myths
Here are just a few contentions that are made by Crichton's "climate skeptic" hero in the book, together with what the scientific evidence actually says.
State of Fear: Temperatures in some locations are actually cooling, so how can the globe be warming?
The facts: True, temperatures are cooling -- in a few select locales. Global warming refers to a warming of the average global temperature. It does not preclude cooling in some locations. Indeed, if some locations are cooling while the globe is warming on average, it follows that there must be other areas that are warming even faster than the global average. In fact, that is exactly what is happening in the Arctic, where temperatures over the past few decades have risen twice as fast as the global average, with potentially disastrous environmental consequences (see our January 2005 Solutions newsletter).
This is but one example of Crichton's selective use of data in his book to advance a specious argument. The establishment of a global trend requires that one consider a global database, not data from a few select sites. As in the case of global temperatures, Crichton uses selective and incomplete data to argue that glaciers are not melting and that sea levels are not rising. The fact is that a careful analysis of the complete global database firmly establishes that ice over the land and sea is thinning and melting and that, on average, sea levels are rising.
State of Fear: The record of increasing surface temperatures cited as evidence of global warming is actually caused by the so-called "Urban Heat Island Effect," and is thus a local, not a global, phenomenon.
The facts: Urban areas do tend to be warmer than rural areas. As the world becomes more urban, average surface temperatures will appear to be increasing. However, the surface temperature record that is used to track global warming has been carefully analyzed to filter out urban heat island effects. Moreover, the evidence of global warming goes well beyond surface temperatures. Contrary to the flawed arguments advanced by Crichton (see above) sea ice is melting, glaciers (like those in our own Glacier National Park) are disappearing, ocean temperatures are on the rise, the permafrost in Alaska is melting and sea levels are increasing.
State of Fear: If carbon dioxide (CO2) is supposed to be causing a global warming, why was there a global cooling between 1940 and 1970 when CO2 concentrations were increasing?
The facts: It is true that temperatures have not strictly followed the trend in atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). Over the past century, temperatures first rose, then fell slightly, then rose again, while GHGs rose steadily the entire time. But there's a simple explanation: there are many factors in addition to GHGs that affect climate. These include natural forces, such as changes in sunlight intensity and volcanic eruptions, and other human-produced effects such as those caused by sulfate aerosols from sulfur oxide emissions. Sunlight variations can either warm or cool the planet depending upon the direction of the change. Volcanic eruptions and sulfate aerosols, on the other hand, have a cooling effect. The actual variation in temperature reflects the net effect of all of these influences.
Since the non-GHG effects change over time, the pattern of observed temperature changes should not be expected to directly follow the trend in GHGs. The slight global cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s appears to be the result of a decrease in solar intensity and a rapid rise in global sulfur oxide emissions. (During this period, both the United States and Europe relied heavily on coal with little or no controls on pollutant emissions, and as a result, global sulfur oxide emissions are estimated to have increased by a factor of about three.) Together, these effects acted to offset the warming effect of increasing GHGs.
By contrast, over the past 25 years, direct satellite measurements of solar intensity exhibit little or no trend and global sulfur oxide emission increases have been modest, while CO2 and other GHG concentrations have continued to increase. The result has been the rapid rise in global average temperatures experienced in recent decades. It is not possible to explain this rapid warming without invoking a dominant role for human-produced CO2 and other GHGs.
State of Fear: Even if warming is occurring, there is little evidence of human causality.
The facts: Attribution of global warming to a specific cause or causes is admittedly difficult, but a variety of independent lines of investigation all point to human emissions of CO2 and other GHGs as a major culprit:
No one has been able to put forward a self-consistent and quantitative explanation for the warming in the latter half of the 20th century without invoking the effects of the GHG from human activities;
The "smoking gun" pointing to industrial emissions as the culprit in global warming has been identified in the spatial and temporal worldwide patterns of warming in the atmosphere and oceans; and
Global temperatures in the last few decades appear to be warmer than in any other time period over the past 2,000 years.
State of Fear: Predictions of global warming are based on climate-model calculations that cannot be relied upon; results from different models disagree by more than 400%.
The facts: Highly advanced climate models have been thoroughly and carefully vetted by the scientific community. It is true that these models project a wide range in the warming of the globe by 2100 (i.e., from about 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit). Much of this range arises from differing assumptions about economic, demographic and technological trends that influence CO2 emissions, not in the models' simulation of the effects of these emissions on climate. All of the models predict that increasing CO2 emissions will lead to further warming of the globe and that the more we emit CO2 in the future, the more the globe will warm. This is actually good news because it suggests we can actually do something about global warming; that is, cut emissions of CO2 and other GHGs.
State of Fear: The published conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that served as a catalyst for international action on global warming are a misrepresentation of the deliberations that actually occurred and have been put forward to advance a political agenda.
The facts: This is nonsensical. In the first place, scientists played a central role in preparing and writing the IPCC reports. Secondly, if the IPCC had misrepresented the science of global warming, there would be a parade of scientists writing letters to newspapers, submitting papers to journals and holding press conferences alerting the world to the hoax. Suffice it to say, there is no parade. Thirdly and most importantly, following the latest IPCC report, President Bush commissioned the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to form a committee of climate experts to independently review the scientific understanding of global warming. The committee included seven members of NAS and one Nobel Prize winner. It was chaired by the now president-elect of the NAS. The committee reported: "the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the global warming that has occurred in the last 50 years is likely the result of increases in greenhouse gases accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community."
State of Fear: The scientists who developed the evidence for global warming cannot be trusted. They have "cooked" the data; they have a vested interest in advancing a global warming agenda; and/or they have a "herd instinct" that causes them to support the accepted view of things.
The facts: Again, nothing could be further from the truth.
A huge community of scientists from different organizations using different approaches and assumptions are working on the problem and publishing their findings, usually in peer-reviewed journals -- there is no way to "cook" the data and not be found out.
It is not clear what special interest scientists have in advancing the proposition that human-caused global warming is occurring. Some of the most outspoken proponents work in federal laboratories with their source of funding, the U.S. government, openly negative about global warming,
Scientists by nature are skeptics. Their reputations are made by upsetting the accepted view, not by supporting it. If a scientist were able to prove that the globe is not warming or that the warming is caused by natural processes instead of GHGs, he or she would instantly become a world-renowned scientist. That has not happened, but it is not for lack of trying.
For more, see a detailed point-by-point discussion of Crichton's assertions and interpretations, by Gavin Schmidt, a NASA/Columbia University climatologist.
Misstating Fear
Perhaps more disturbing than Crichton's faulty science, however, are the assertions he makes, through his protagonist, about the fundamental untrustworthiness, dubious motives and non-accountability of environmentalists (as well as scientists and media professionals, who can readily defend themselves).
To the contrary, Environmental Defense is a science-based organization, employing 29 PhD scientists in a wide range of disciplines in the natural and physical sciences. We don't invent problems. Nor do we advance solutions without compelling scientific evidence of their efficacy. And as for accountability, our financial records, including complete tax filings and independently audited financial reports, are readily available online for anyone to scrutinize. Our major donors are identified in our annual report.
We would be happy for Mr. Crichton to visit and challenge our scientists, or to examine our financial reports.
As for the charge that environmentalists are determined to foster a "state of fear" with regard to the environment (hence the title of his book), we would point out that modern citizens have virtually unlimited access to information from a huge diversity of sources -- to say nothing of their own direct observation of the world immediately around them -- from which they can draw their own conclusions about the endangered state of the environment.
Ours is but one interpretation of the real world data. If it didn't pass the "sniff test" of being confirmed by other independent information and observation, we would simply be tuned out. In the age of instant and universal availability of global information, the notion that any organization -- be it an environmental group, a media outlet, a government, a corporation or a scientific body -- could stampede an unwitting citizenry over a cliff is ludicrous on its face.
We Don't Know Everything, but We Know Enough to Act
Ultimately, Crichton's greatest disservice is to argue that insufficient certainty about climate change data should lead us to do nothing ... make no interventions.
In a world where scientific certainty is elusive in any domain, the fact is that the data on climate change and the impact of GHG emissions is more than sufficient to justify precautionary action. This is precisely why hundreds of governments, academic bodies and corporations have sounded the alarm and already are planning, advocating and taking immediate ameliorative steps to curb damaging emissions.
Rarely does the scientific study of complex systems such as the climate reach a point of closure with all scientific questions answered, as Crichton would naively require. People and societies regularly take action in the face of uncertain future risk -- using a seat-belt when driving, taking out life insurance or beefing up security at our nation's airports.
The economic, health and ecosystem risks from inaction far outweigh the inconvenience of moving away from a carbon-based energy economy. Nothing could be more imprudent than sitting on our hands in the face of a steadily accumulating body of evidence that global warming is occurring, and is already having harmful impacts, and that these will only get worse the longer we wait to act and will take a century or more to undo, if ever.
In the practical world, what must be weighed are the potential risks of future global warming, and the range of possible costs to us and our children of doing nothing, versus the possible costs of taking action to avert these risks. The overwhelming majority of informed observers who have assessed the risks and costs have concluded that steps should be taken now to limit the human-contribution to global warming by placing reasonable caps on CO2 emissions. The costs would be modest, and the potential benefits are significant and go well beyond concerns over global warming. For example, improved energy efficiency would yield direct economic benefits and increase our global competitiveness, while reducing U.S. reliance on foreign oil.
Environmental Defense is a leading national nonprofit organization with 29 Ph.D. scientists and 32 master level scientists and economists on staff. Since 1967, we have linked science, economics and law to create innovative, equitable and cost-effective solutions to society's most urgent environmental problems.
[ 本帖最後由 Greg 於 2007-6-18 00:56 編輯 ]
