andy h wrote:
Read "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton. Mediocre novel but there are some interesting points regarding the climate change agenda and globalisation. He adds some cooments and suggested further reading at the end too.
I recommend reading Charile and The Chocolate Factory if you enjoy fiction.
Whilst I acknowledge and enjoy any debate on climatology, this book is an absolute fairy tale.
It's absolutely no fact. It's a myth. Read the reviews from independent scientists. Nothing infuriates me more than people advocating that complete and utter work of fucking shit.
Sixteen of 18 top U.S. climate scientists interviewed by Knight Ridder said the author was bending scientific data and distorting research
James E. Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote "He (Michael Crichton) doesn’t seem to have the foggiest notion about the science that he writes about."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear#Scientific---
In fact, a collection of scientists got together and made a big webpage about how much shit in in that book:
http://go.ucsusa.org/global_environment ... ageID=1670--
Even the guy who authored the graphs in the book that MC used said that he's full of shit and distorting data:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/opini ... .html?_r=1---
To be honest, when I read the book I thought it was pretty good in places and complete nonsense in others. His idea about creating lightning was one of the dumbest things that I'd ever read. I enjoyed his bit right near the end (I think the characters were in a cafe) speaking about the climate of fear created by the mass media and this has strong echoes in the Power of Nightmares series of documentaries that I enjoyed. The bit with the canninbals was pretty shocking but made a good point about the reality of nature.
However, the climate 'science' in there almost made me throw the fucking thing out of the window. I only read it because I'd heard through the grapevine that he'd released a book that was almost offensive in how poor it treated the source material. Having read Jurassic Park and his one about the nanomachines, I thought that it was maybe an over reaction.
Then I read it.
The way that he tries to present scientific data, without any context AT ALL is infuriating. The way that he cherrypicks bits here and there and massively misunderstands the meaning of what climate is. How he trots out some utter shit regarding the urban heat effect; how he consistently uses data that he twists to point to his own conclusions. I swear, I've never read a book in my life that made me angrier, and I've read Fergies autobiography. I'm all for reading books that challenge your own position and often do so. But this was a book that actually TRIED to be scientific by NOT BEING SCIENTIFIC AT ALL.
Fuck that book, and fuck Crichton.
-- Mon Jul 02, 2012 1:32 pm --
Tuearts right boot wrote:
Qualified scientists can get it wrong,especially if salaries and funding are involved
Indeed they can, which is why we have things built into the Scientific Method to reduce bias as much as possible, so that any peer reviewed paper published in a respected journal can be trusted as reliable.
If you disagree, you are encouraged to do the experiment yourself and draw your own conclusions based on the data.
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