Free Republic

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...

<p>Sunspots have been more common in the past seven decades than at any time in the last 8,000 years, according to a new historic reconstruction of solar activity.</p> <p>Many researchers have tried to link sunspot activity to climate change, but the new results cannot be used to explain global warming, according to the scientists who did the study.</p>

Montreal (CNSNews.com) - Environmental groups attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference have demanded that the U.S. and the other industrialized nations pay a "climate debt" to the poor nations for contributing to catastrophic, human-caused "global warming." "Let's face it, [the developing countries] are not responsible for the problem and yet they are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change," said Catherine Pearce, international climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). Pearce spoke with Cybercast News Service at the 11th annual U.N. Climate Change Conference in Montreal. "It is total over-exploitation by the North[ern Hemisphere] and...

OSLO (Reuters) - Rising temperatures trigger a runaway melt of Greenland's ice sheet, raising sea levels and drowning Pacific islands and cities from New York to Tokyo. In Siberia, the permafrost thaws, releasing vast frozen stores of greenhouse gases that send temperatures even higher. In the tropics, the Amazon rainforest starts to die off because of a warmer, drier climate. Such scenarios may read like the script of a Hollywood disaster movie but many scientists say there are real risks of "tipping points" -- sudden, catastrophic changes triggered by human activities blamed for warming the planet. "Even small risks in...

Michael Crichton’s technopolitical thriller State of Fear (HarperCollins) turns on a controversial notion: that all the talk we’ve been hearing about global warming—polar ice caps melting, weather systems sent into calamitous confusion, beach weather lingering into January—might be at best misguided, at worst dead wrong. It’s The Da Vinci Code with real facts, violent storms, and a different kind of faith altogether.

Glaciers in the Antarctic are retreating at an increasing rate, in what scientists said on Thursday was a clear sign of climate change. Most of the glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula, near the southernmost tip of South America, have retreated over the past 50 years as temperatures have warmed, according to a study from the British Antarctic Survey and US Geological Survey. Inland glaciers appear to be accelerating their descent to the ocean, threatening to raise the sea level. David Vaughan, one of the authors of the study, said: "The widespread retreat of the glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula over...

Have the nuclear industry and its supporters suddenly gained an environmental consciousness? While they're not planning to close their dangerous, polluting reactors nor begin dealing responsibly with their legacy of toxic radioactive wastes, they are now professing deep concern about climate change — and argue that nuclear power is the only solution. Even environmentalists are turning to nuclear power, we're told. It's not true — you could count them on one hand — but the nuclear boosters and the mainstream media aren't letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Proponents of nuclear power downplay or ignore...

Had it appeared on the SciFi Channel, “Supervolcano” would have received little attention other than a few random reviews. Instead, it was broadcast on Discovery and was hyped even to the point of having trailers appear in movie theaters. According to the advertising, “This is a true story. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

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...

On Feb.15, the eve of the effective date of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, I introduced the Pennsylvania Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act (H.B. 500), which would represent an important first step for Pennsylvania in addressing global climate change. Our federal government's failure to sign on to the Kyoto Treaty makes it even more important for individual states to take action. Pennsylvania has a particular responsibility to act. Our state alone produces about 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than 105 developing nations combined. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act, which was introduced with the bipartisan support of...

Michael Crichton's scary movies, like "Jurassic Park," have made billions. He has sold 100 million copies of his scary books. And now he's telling us: Don't be scared. He almost didn't write his latest book, "State of Fear." "I'm 62 years old," he told me. "I've had a good life. I'm happy. I'm enjoying myself. I don't need any of the flak that would come from doing a book like this." Flak is coming because the fear Crichton is questioning is fear of global warming. And as Crichton told me, "people's feelings about the environment are very close to religion."...

The inexorable drumbeat of climate disaster stories goes on, but no one seems interested in checking the facts. The most recent assault on common sense comes from Alaska. There, Republican senators Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski are said to be favoring onerous climate change legislation sponsored by Arizona's John McCain. McCain thinks he can ride global warming all the way to the 2008 presidential nomination, by grabbing the horde of green-leaning California and Pacific Coast delegates that will be off-limits to his Southern competition, Bill Frist (Tennessee) and George Allen (Virginia), who oppose McCain's expensive, ineffective bill. McCain's bill will...

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...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com The green 'State of Fear'By Suzanne FieldsPublished February 3, 2005          Michael Crichton is a high-tech, science-savvy Renaissance man in the 21st century. He has sold more than a hundred million books, which have been translated into 30 languages. Twelve became high-grossing movies. Children everywhere have "Jurassic Park" nightmares.     His books are so popular in China that when the calcified remains of a species of dinosaur was discovered there, the Chinese named it Bienosaurus crichtoni in his honor. In 1992, People magazine named him one of the "Fifty Most Beautiful People." Now a new kind...

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...

[State of Fear, by Michael Crichton. 603 pages. Published December 7, 2004, by HarperCollins Publishers. Hardcover, $27.95. Available at www.Amazon.com.] Michael Crichton, the author of The Andromeda Strain, Rising Sun, Jurassic Park and other block-buster thrillers, has penned a novel that could profoundly change the national and even international debate over global warming. It's long overdue. Crichton's State of Fear, with a reported first print run of 1.7 million copies, is an action thriller that doubles as a scientific primer on global warming and other environmental topics. Crichton's protagonists -- a scientist, a lawyer, a philanthropist and two remarkably athletic...

In today's segmented America, Michael Crichton's new novel "State of Fear" might seem to be just reading for red states.... The theory of global warming — Crichton says warming has amounted to just half a degree Celsius in 100 years — is that "greenhouse gases," particularly carbon dioxide, trap heat on Earth, causing . . . well, no one knows what, or when. Crichton's heroic skeptics delight in noting things like the decline of global temperature from 1940 to 1970. And that since 1970 glaciers in Iceland have been advancing. And that Antarctica is getting colder and its ice is...

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...

Yet many climate scientists have endorsed climate change predictions. Climate records continue to fall as many different regions experience warmer temperatures than they have in centuries. While it is always possible that the experts are wrong, that possibility diminishes with each passing year as evidence mounts for a connection between carbon dioxide emissions and climate warming.