Free Republic

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out. This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms. -excerpted- Click HERE for the rest of the essay.

Global warming has become the apocalyptic cult of the new millennium. None of the other jeremiahs, throughout the ages, can hold an end-of-the-world candle to ozone-layer mystics prophesying climate Armageddon. I just came across the ultimate Al Gore coffee table book, "The World Tomorrow: Scenarios of Global Catastrophe" by Yannick Monget. On the jacket, the author is described as "the founder and chief representative of the Ankaa Group, an organization dedicated to conceiving and developing ambitious projects for the environmental protection of Europe." If that weren't enough of a contribution to mankind, we are told Monget "has written several volumes...

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today. Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to...

NOTE: I don't know if this is on Youtube yet, or not] Wednesday, March 14, 2007 Global warming is not a crisis Speaking for the motion: Michael Crichton, Richard S. Lindzen, Philip Stott Speaking against the motion: Brenda Ekwurzel, Gavin Schmidt, Richard C.J. Somerville Moderator: Brian Lehrer SOLD OUT MODERATOR: Brian Lehrer is host of the highly-acclaimed “Brian Lehrer Show” heard weekday mornings on WNYC® New York Public Radio®, 820 AM, 93.9 FM and wnyc.org. He is also an award-winning author and documentary producer. Lehrer holds masters degrees in journalism and public health/environmental sciences. SPEAKERS FOR THE MOTION: Michael Crichton...

Two centuries years ago, Voltaire proclaimed, “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Today, our free speech traditions are under assault. Colleges prohibit “offensive” or “politically incorrect” speech. Radical Islamists threaten to kill scholars, artists and even popes who “disrespect” the Prophet. And when we desperately need unfettered scientific debate, intolerant eco-activists have ushered in an era of climate McCarthyism and eco-Inquisitions. Al Gore seeks to muzzle anyone who raises inconvenient truths about climate alarmism. Greenpeace wants “climate criminals” pilloried and silenced. Grist magazine wants “Nuremberg-style war crimes trials” for...

Thank you Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the important subject of politicization of research. In that regard, what I would like to emphasize to the committee today is the importance of independent verification to science. In essence, science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid-and merits universal acceptance-only if it can be independently verified. The impersonal rigor of the method means it is utterly apolitical. A truth in science is verifiable whether you are black or white, male or female, old or young. It's...

One of the perquisites of being president is the ability to have the author of a book you enjoyed pop into the White House for a chat. Over the years, a number of writers have visited President Bush, including Natan Sharansky, Bernard Lewis and John Lewis Gaddis. And while the meetings are usually private, they rarely ruffle feathers. Now, one has. In his new book about Mr. Bush, "Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year by Michael Crichton, whose 2004 best-selling novel, "State...

David Suzuki vs. Michael Crichton Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 Last Thursday, environmentalist guru David Suzuki stormed out of a Toronto AM640 radio interview with host John Oakley because Oakley dared to suggest that global warming might not be the "totally settled issue" Suzuki insisted it was. Oakley only reported a fact: Many accredited scientists -- some full professors from top universities, including Nobel prize winners and a former president of the National Academy of Sciences -- would argue that "global warning is at best unproven and at worst pure fantasy," according to novelist and...

This is really fascinating. Check out the VIDEO of Charlie Rose interviewing Michael Crichton on the subject of Global Warming. The Global Warming discussion starts at exactly 22 minutes into the video.

February 13, 2007 Op-Ed Contributor Patenting Life By MICHAEL CRICHTON YOU, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real. Gene patents are now used to halt research, prevent medical testing and keep vital information from you and your doctor. Gene patents slow the pace of medical advance on deadly diseases. And they raise costs exorbitantly: a test for breast cancer that could be done for $1,000 now costs $3,000. Why? Because the holder of the gene patent can charge whatever...

I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance. We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact...

In 2004, Jurassic Park and Congo author Michael Crichton released State of Fear, a techno-thriller centered around an extremist enviro group who is trying to create global disasters in order to gain support for their failing cause. I finally had a chance to read this book, and while it’s fiction, it’s also deeply rooted in reality. The actions and motivations of the radical enviros and their non-profit fronts in the book sound much like the real thing. But what really sets this novel apart is that the author uses real science to document the problems of radical envrionmentalism, to the...

In our urgency to deal with really urgent stuff over the past few weeks, we have been piling up news articles regarding what some regard as a universal urgency. That would be global warming or Global Warming or GLOBAL WARMING, depending on one's perspective, provided that one has a perspective. Bill Clinton, speaking last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that mother of all junkets for rich folks who take themselves very seriously, said that GLOBAL WARMING bothered him a bunch. "It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of...

Fear and Complexity The Independent Institute San Francisco, CA November 15, 2005 by Michael Crichton  Is this really the end of the world?  Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods? No, we simply live on an active planet.  Earthquakes are continuous, a million and a half of them every year, or three every minute. A Richter 5 quake every six hours, a major quake every 3 weeks. A quake as destructive as the one in Pakistan every 8 months.  It’s nothing new, it’s right on schedule. At any moment there are 1,500 electrical storms on the planet. A tornado touches down every six...

It would be nice if FR allowed more search options. For instance: Author. I'm currently trying to find a Michael Chricton article about global warming that appeared as a thread a time back but none of the keyword or title searches have helped. I'm sure I could google both Chricton and global warming and probably find the link and then search for that title at FR, but wouldn't it be better to have that option within FR from the getgo. Just a thought; in reality, I don't know how much of a strain that would put on the search engine...

One of the many striking statements in Michael Crichton's best-selling novel, "State of Fear," comes in a footnote on page 43: "Since 1940 ... data have [shown] ... predominantly a cooling trend. ... The Greenland ice sheet and coastal regions are not following the current global warming trend."Forget the words, interesting as they are in the context of supposed worldwide warming trends. Consider this obvious point: They come from a well-sourced footnote in a best-selling work of fiction.Obviously, "Fear" is not the normal novel. It is, in fact, a jeremiad against junk science, against the politicized theory of global warming...

Michael Crichton has written that rarest of books, an ­intellectually dishonest novel. Crichton has made a fortune exploiting the public’s fears: Prey (fear of nanotechnology), Rising Sun (fear of Japanese technological supremacy), and Jurassic Park (fear of biotechnology). These books attack the hubris of those who use technology without wisdom. In Prey, he warns, “The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything that we do.” Given the author’s past, one might expect that a Crichton book on global warming would warn about the risk of catastrophic climate change—the...

Michael Crichton's latest novel may not be a great literary event, but it is a significant cultural event. In the past, his bestselling books have sparked public interest in genetic engineering, sexual harassment law, biotechnology, New Age religious thought, the search for extraterrestrial life, changing medical technology and bioethics, corporate ethics scandals, and other important trends. Now Crichton—a popular mainstream author—has chosen to ridicule left-wing political activism and challenge the intelligentsia's central ideas about civilization itself. State of Fear's protagonist, Peter Evans, is personal attorney to multibillionaire George Morton, a political liberal who bankrolls a dizzying array of left-wing causes...

The most important point in Michael Crichton's runaway best seller "State of Fear" is his comparison of the global warming theory to the theory of eugenics. The theory of eugenics contends that the human condition would be improved through government-mandated selective breeding. The theory of global warming contends that government-mandated reduction in the use of fossil fuel is required to prevent catastrophic climate change. Francis Galton coined the term "eugenics" in 1883 to describe the practice of studied, selective breeding to improve the human race. It was a reasonable idea at the time, supported by the growing practice of agricultural...

Michael Crichton spoke about science policy during a talk hosted by the American Enterprise Institute -Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. Mr. Crichton said that the politics of science often influence the results of scientific studies because certain groups have particular interests in the outcome of a test. An example would be a company that manufactures aerosol cans, funding a test about the effects of aerosol on the ozone layer. Mr. Crichton argues that for a study to be particularly fair, two different groups with opposing interests (when applicable) should conduct the same study at the same time and then...

WASHINGTON - A provocative new novel that says fears of global warming are unjustified and stoked by an environmentalist-media conspiracy is taking Washington by storm. “State of Fear,” a novel by Michael Crichton, the best-selling author of “Jurassic Park,” and the creator of the TV show “ER”, compares scientists who warn of global warming to advocates of eugenics who said that the mixing of races would ruin the world’s genetic stock. In an appendix explaining his position, Crichton writes: “Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon. Nobody knows how much of the present...

E-mail Author Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version December 21, 2004, 8:39 a.m. Science FictionMichael Crichton takes a novel approach to global-warming alarmism. By Iain Murray Michael Crichton's new blockbuster novel, State of Fear, begins with sex, violence, and oceanography. It's that sort of book all the way through, mixing the usual adventure novel clichés of beautiful young heroes, indestructible secret agents, and a plot to kill millions alongside hard science, including graphs, footnotes, and words like "aminostratigraphy." As such, the book is half a rip-roaring roller coaster of a read (as Edmund Blackadder would...

On the surface, Michael Crichton's "State of Fear," can be seen simply as a thriller in which environmentalists happen to be the villains. Mixed with the story, however, are lengthy, annotated attacks on the scientific consensus that the globe is warming, human activity is a cause, and accumulating emissions of greenhouse gases may dangerously disrupt the climate system. While Mr. Crichton includes a note emphasizing that most of the book is a "product of the author's imagination," he adds that "references to real people, institutions and organizations that are documented in footnotes are accurate. Footnotes are real." Just one week...

This year I turned 62, and I find I have acquired—along with aches and pains—a perspective on the world that I lacked as a younger person. I now recognize that for most of my life I have felt burdened by highly publicized fears that decades later did not turn out to be true. I was reminded of this when I came across this 1972 statement about climate: “We simply cannot afford to gamble…We cannot risk inaction. Those scientists who [disagree] are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably...

Crichton, Heston: YOU CAN'T DESTROY EARTH December 7, 2004

So often what you think you know may not be so. And it's a reason I love the book just out from America's top-selling thriller writer, Michael Crichton. He's the man who created the popular TV medical drama "ER," wrote "Jurassic Park," which ranks among the top 10 grossing films of all time, and much more. Crichton's books and movies have grossed more than $4 billion. Now, he's tackling global warming in his latest techno-thriller, "State of Fear."

I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance. We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact...

In "State of Fear" (HarperCollins, 603 pages, $27.95), Michael Crichton delivers a lightning-paced technopolitical thriller that turns on a controversial notion: All that talk we've been hearing about global warming -- you know, polar ice caps melting, weather systems sent into calamitous confusion, beach weather lingering well into January -- might be at best misguided, at worst dead wrong. Think "The Da Vinci Code" with real facts, violent storms and a different kind of faith altogether. The book opens with the murder of an American graduate student studying ocean-wave dynamics. ("State of Fear" is the sort of thriller that makes...

Who dinosaured Michael Crichton? Was it a comet or just the responsibility of being America's prophet of doom? In his new book, State of Fear, Crichton once again ascends to the pulpit to warn us of an impending horror. Like the diabolical Japanese businessmen in Rising Sun and the corporate vixen in Disclosure, these new shadowy forces, Crichton says, lurk among us, poised to wreak havoc. They're among America's fiercest enemies. They're … environmentalists. State of Fear is a 600-page tirade about global warming. Crichton thinks environmentalists have become overheated about the threat and have substituted demagoguery for hard science....

Michael Crichton's new novel "State Of Fear." (2005)

January 20, 2004 Science and pseudoscience Posted by Henry Michael Crichton has made millions by writing mass market thrillers that either regurgitate partially understood scientific factoids, or pander to the nasty little revenge fantasies of male white middle-managers. He’s not averse to spicing his novels up with a hefty pinch of racism (the ‘Fu Manchu’ in a three-piece suit Japan bashing in Rising Sun) or sexism (in the rather revolting Disclosure). All in all, it’s rather surprising that Caltech should have asked him to deliver a prestigious lecture. The content and tone of that lecture, however, aren’t surprising at all....

<p>I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.</p>