State of Fear

State of Fear ' exists to make the bold and controversial point that climate science should be doubted . Michael Crichton 's State of Fear is an attempt to meld serious politico-scientific critique with a modern techno-thriller . The author basically makes the following claims . One of these claims is that global warming concerns are not supported by the evidence he even goes as far as to claim there is only weak support for a significant warming trend . He further contends that the environmental movement promotes warming as its number one issue because it is

profitable and having spent so much political capital on it they will look silly if they don 't maintain the dogma

One of the scientifically sound arguments that Crichton makes is the prediction that the earth is actually cooling . Early on in State of Fear , a skeptical character points out that while carbon dioxide was rising between 1940 and 1970 , the globe was cooling . In the real world climate is affected both by internal variability (natural internal processes within the climate system ) and forcings (external forces either natural or human-induced , acting on the climate system . Some forcings -- sulfate and nitrate aerosols , land-use changes , solar irradiance , and volcanic aerosols , for instance -- can cause cooling Matching up what really happened with what we might have expected to happen requires taking into consideration all the forcings , as best as we can . Even then , any discrepancy might be due to internal variability (related principally to the ocean on multi-decadal time scales . Our current "best guess " is that the global mean changes in temperature including the 1940-1970 cooling , are quite closely related to the forcings . Regional patterns of change appear to be linked more closely to internal variability , particularly during the 1930s . No model that does not include a sharp rise in greenhouse gases (GHGs , principally CO2 , is able to match up with recent warming and thus the conclusion that GHGs are driving warming

The book also shows , through the selective use of weather-station data a number of single-station records with long-term cooling trends . In particular , characters visit Punta Arenas , at the tip of South America where the station record posted on the wall shows a long-term cooling trend (though slight warming since the 1970s

Another important plot or arguable scientific fact that the whole global warming scare is a product of a more sinister group is the claim that Dr . Hansen overestimated [global warming] by 300 percent " as mentioned by one of the books heroes

James Hansen 's three climate scenarios , as presented in 1998

The claim of a "300 percent " error comes from noted climate skeptic Patrick Michaels , who in testimony before Congress in 1998 deleted scenarios B and C from the chart he used in to give the impression that the models were unreliable . Thus a significant success for climate modeling was presented as a complete failure -- a willful distortion that Crichton adopts uncritically

The well-known and exhaustively studied "urban heat island effect " -- the tendency...