Sunday, May 3, 2015

Review of State of Fear by Michael Crichton



Reading State of Fear, Michael Crichton's global warming debunking novel, made me realize how political all of his books were. His 1968 novel A Case of Need is pro-abortion. Prey is about the danger of self-reproducing technology.

Many of his books were about the awesome power of technology. People have called him "technophobic", but his own description in Andromeda Strain about the scientists is more revealing: “What they did not anticipate was the magnitude, the staggering dimensions of their error.” Jurassic Park is the same story, and the Jeff Goldblum character represents Crichton himself.

He once said,

"Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people—the best people, the most enlightened people—do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in god, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious."
He thought that the religion had become environmentalism. But it is amazing how passe environmentalism has become over the past 20 years. Who cares about it anymore? Open borders trumps environmentalism, for example.

He gave a lecture at Caltech about the unscientific notion of "consensus" being used to sell global warming:
"Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period."
Global warming looked like a promising scam; luckily the hoax is as dead as a doornail. The elites were scheming to impose an awful taxation and regulation tyranny.

3/5

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love your blog but this post confuses me. Where do you live such that you believe environmentalism is passe? Or that the hoax is dead? I see no such evidence in the majority of elite circles found in major metro areas (unfortunately).

Anonymous said...

Look how many planes showed up in Vegas this weekend

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20920316,00.html

Nobody gives a FUCK about global warming anymore.

Anonymous said...

There is a long history of people riding in limousines or planes and still being a green crusader. Look no further than Mr. Gore himself...his politics never stopped him from having a huge house or globetrotting.

Anonymous said...

Fine, but like I said, nobody gives a fuck anymore.

People care about homosexual marriage and transsexuals.

To a lesser extent, they care about letting black criminals out of jail.

CP said...

Here we go. Search interest peaked in March 2007. It's a fraction of what it was then:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=global%20warming%2C%20climate%20change

Josh H said...

I'm just glad that scientists are out there (that have credible backgrounds) are saying hey wait a minute, the debate is not over.

The data that we have is very limited and will be better going forward. Also, we have no idea what technology will do.

I have no such background, but it was obvious to me that we use the most recent past and make huge forecasting errors.

I wonder if at some point in the next 10-20 years that co2 starts declining due to a couple of what if scenarios.

Natural gas taking over for coal (natural gas isn't super clean by any means but it is much cleaner than coal). Or coal capture technology becomes better and is economical.

Solar and wind costs continue to decline, causing economic benefits to be a no brainer.

bjdubbs said...

The search interest in GW just tracks (with a lag) interest in Al Gore's movie.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=inconvenient%20truth%2C%20global%20warming&cmpt=q&tz=


I agree that nobody really cares about GW or CC, for the reason that it doesn't personally affect anyone.

ADL said...

So just to be clear, it's your thesis that "the elites" cooked up global warming so they could impose tyranny? And that their end goal is to increase social control through this lever?

What do you think of the idea that the anti-global warming camp is another elite--those who've made rather a lot of money in fossil fuels?

Anonymous said...

The google search data is interesting but not conclusive. Another reason it could be down so much is that it's less controversial or there are less current events stories.

If you walked into a random cocktail party in NYC, SF, LA, or Chicago and started talking about how climate change was a hoax, you would find your invitations to future such parties drop off immediately. Expect a similar result for cocktail parties at any leading university.

CP said...

The rebranding of global warming as climate change has succeeded:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=global%20warming,climate%20change