Friday, January 07, 2005
The environmentalists arise!
Yesterday I reviewed Michael Crichton's book new novel, State of Fear. Among other observations, I predicted that "State of Fear will cause more public relations trouble for the Kyoto Treaty than any study or white paper or industry lobby ever could." In one short day there is anecdotal evidence that Crichton's novel is indeed worrying the environmentalists.
The first bit of such evidence is very parochial: My review quickly piled up something like 15 comments, which is a lot for this blog. Several came from environmentalists or their sympathizers, who posted counterarguments complete with links and other citations. Since I write a lot of stuff that might inspire such people to comment, it is interesting that the Crichton post drew such a crowd, both pro and con.
Then I saw this article by Wayne Madsen, "a senior fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. He wrote this column for Knight Ridder newspapers." Madsen's column is very strident and grossly misrepresents Crichton's novel. It is obviously a counterattack designed to deter people from reading the book. No matter. The several hundred keen readers of TigerHawk will know otherwise.
Let the fisking begin:
Actually, the book doesn't "demonize scientists." Most of the heroes of the book are scientists. It doesn't even "demonize scientists who argue that the world is heading to cataclysmic weather change." I read the book last week and am not about to go through it again to deconstruct Wayne Madsen ridiculous essay, but I do not recall a single demonized scientist. The principle bad guy is Nicholas Drake, "a highly successful litigator who had retired to become the director of the National Environmental Resource Fund, a major American activist group." (pp. 39 - 40) Most of the other bad guys are thugs of one sort or another, Hollywood celebrities, lawyers and "eco-terrorists" of uncertain profession. Madsen has, essentially, lied in his second paragraph.
The environmentalists are definitely the villains. Or rather, some of them are. The "good guys" of the novel are not "corporate shills." The central good guy is a scientist turned federal agent. His band of brothers includes a south Asian with mysterious military skills, a naive young corporate lawyer named Peter Evans, a beautiful environmental litigator who used to be a soldier (and who is therefore mighty handy in a jam), a billionaire who had been funding Drake's group until it tried to defraud him, and the billionaire's extremely capable and good looking personal secretary. There are no "corporate shills" being "paid big bucks" anywhere in the novel.
False. There are many divergent views on any number of topics embedded in the story, but Crichton could not be more clear on his personal opinions. In the "author's message" in the back of the book he sets forth 25 bullet points that reflect his own conclusions about the science of climate change. Here are six of those points:
Crichton concludes that we are in the midst of a warming trend, and allows that "nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made." How can Madsen claim that "according to Crichton, global warming is a myth"? Either Madsen has not read the book that he is writing about, or he is being very dishonest about its contents. I grope for a more charitable explanation.
Carefully read these four paragraphs. There is nothing here but a lame attempt at character assassination by associating him with Rupert Murdoch. Does anybody really think that Michael Crichton spent three years of his life researching and writing this novel because Rupert Murdoch "wave[d] his big money around"? Is that how Murdoch got to publish the books of noted right-wing crazy Jon Stewart? Did Murdoch buy off Ralph Nader?
Whatever you think of Madsen, he definitely understands that if you do not have the winning argument be sure to smear the other guy's character.
If Karl Rove is behind all of this, why wasn't State of Fear published before the election?
More character assassination. Murdoch is "using" Crichton as "a messenger"? Is he also using Ralph Nader as a messenger? What about all the other left-wing guys who write books for HarperCollins? And Crichton is not credible about climate change because he wrote Jurassic Park? He also wrote about time travel to 14th century France and an alien vessel at the bottom of the ocean. Does that mean he can no longer be credible on any subject? Do the "errors" in Madsen's column mean that Madsen can no longer be credible on any subject? The answer to one of these questions is "yes."
Whether Crichton is right or wrong, he has heavily documented his novel with references. He has footnotes, tables actually extracted from NASA databases in the text itself, and a lengthy annotated bibliography. In the novel he does address the question of the melting Arctic. Crichton does not say or even intimate that the Arctic ice cap isn't melting. Rather, he argues that it melts and refreezes with great volatility, and in recent times has been substantially smaller than it is today. He questions whether the current melting of the Arctic ice cap is a function of human activity, or simply a waning before another waxing.
Crichton does question whether Antarctic ice is melting. One character in the novel says that "one relatively small area called the Anarctic Peninsula is melting and calving huge icebergs. That's what gets reported year after year. But the continent as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker." Crichton cites peer-reviewed papers from Nature and Journal of Climate to back up his character's point. (pp. 193-195)
More character assassination. Crichton is now associated with unnamed and uncited "ludicrous right-wingers."
Madsen's attack on Crichton is riddled with misrepresentations (to be charitable) or lies (to be fair) about Crichton's work. Madsen smears Crichton's character, and associates Crichton with unnamed consipirators. While I have never understood precisely what people mean by "McCarthyite" tactics, if that term means anything useful it describes Madsen's unprincipled attack on Michael Crichton.
Read the book and decide for yourself.
The first bit of such evidence is very parochial: My review quickly piled up something like 15 comments, which is a lot for this blog. Several came from environmentalists or their sympathizers, who posted counterarguments complete with links and other citations. Since I write a lot of stuff that might inspire such people to comment, it is interesting that the Crichton post drew such a crowd, both pro and con.
Then I saw this article by Wayne Madsen, "a senior fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. He wrote this column for Knight Ridder newspapers." Madsen's column is very strident and grossly misrepresents Crichton's novel. It is obviously a counterattack designed to deter people from reading the book. No matter. The several hundred keen readers of TigerHawk will know otherwise.
Let the fisking begin:
Michael Crichton's new novel, State of Fear, not only unfairly bashes the global environmental movement but represents yet another example of how multinational corporations and their political allies are invading the popular culture to advance fanatic and lunatic right-wing ideas and agendas.
The book demonizes scientists who argue that the world is heading toward cataclysmic weather change unless something is done about the spewing forth of greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere.
Actually, the book doesn't "demonize scientists." Most of the heroes of the book are scientists. It doesn't even "demonize scientists who argue that the world is heading to cataclysmic weather change." I read the book last week and am not about to go through it again to deconstruct Wayne Madsen ridiculous essay, but I do not recall a single demonized scientist. The principle bad guy is Nicholas Drake, "a highly successful litigator who had retired to become the director of the National Environmental Resource Fund, a major American activist group." (pp. 39 - 40) Most of the other bad guys are thugs of one sort or another, Hollywood celebrities, lawyers and "eco-terrorists" of uncertain profession. Madsen has, essentially, lied in his second paragraph.
The environmentalists are the villains. The corporate shills who have been paid big bucks to debunk the global-warming community are the good guys.
The environmentalists are definitely the villains. Or rather, some of them are. The "good guys" of the novel are not "corporate shills." The central good guy is a scientist turned federal agent. His band of brothers includes a south Asian with mysterious military skills, a naive young corporate lawyer named Peter Evans, a beautiful environmental litigator who used to be a soldier (and who is therefore mighty handy in a jam), a billionaire who had been funding Drake's group until it tried to defraud him, and the billionaire's extremely capable and good looking personal secretary. There are no "corporate shills" being "paid big bucks" anywhere in the novel.
According to Crichton, global warming is a myth.
False. There are many divergent views on any number of topics embedded in the story, but Crichton could not be more clear on his personal opinions. In the "author's message" in the back of the book he sets forth 25 bullet points that reflect his own conclusions about the science of climate change. Here are six of those points:
- Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause.
- We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that began about 1850, as we emerged from a four-hundred-year cold spell known as the "Little Ice Age."
- Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon.
- Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made.
- Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, de facto proof that nobody knows.
- I suspect that part of the observed surface warming will ultimately be attributable to human activity. I uspect that the principal human effct will come from land use, and that the atmospheric component will be minor.
Crichton concludes that we are in the midst of a warming trend, and allows that "nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made." How can Madsen claim that "according to Crichton, global warming is a myth"? Either Madsen has not read the book that he is writing about, or he is being very dishonest about its contents. I grope for a more charitable explanation.
In today's world of increasing corporate control of almost every facet of our public and private lives, Crichton's screed against the environmental movement should come as no great surprise.
After all, the publisher of "State of Fear" is HarperCollins, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the same people who feed Americans and people around the world a daily dosage of right-wing propaganda billed as 24-hour news.
Murdoch can wave his big money around and always expect to find some novelist, screenwriter, movie director, journalist, left-wing, centrist or right-wing magazine editor, cartoonist or research institute fellow to allow himself or herself to become a human version of a coin-operated nickelodeon.
It is obvious Murdoch will eventually have his Fox movie arm put Crichton's global ecoterrorism conspiracy tale on the big screen to counteract the climate-change warning in Roland Emmerich's disaster flick "The Day After Tomorrow."
Carefully read these four paragraphs. There is nothing here but a lame attempt at character assassination by associating him with Rupert Murdoch. Does anybody really think that Michael Crichton spent three years of his life researching and writing this novel because Rupert Murdoch "wave[d] his big money around"? Is that how Murdoch got to publish the books of noted right-wing crazy Jon Stewart? Did Murdoch buy off Ralph Nader?
Whatever you think of Madsen, he definitely understands that if you do not have the winning argument be sure to smear the other guy's character.
Crichton's book, perhaps not coincidentally, comes out when the Bush administration is blowing off the Arctic meltdown concerns raised in the Arctic Climate Change Assessment, initiated by regional Arctic nations and native tribal peoples.
If Karl Rove is behind all of this, why wasn't State of Fear published before the election?
Murdoch and his corporate cronies may want to think twice before using a science-fiction messenger like Crichton, who has suggested in his previous novel "Jurassic Park" that living dinosaurs can be recreated using 65-million-year-old DNA extracted from the blood of mosquitoes encased in amber to launch a tirade against actual and reasoned scientists.
More character assassination. Murdoch is "using" Crichton as "a messenger"? Is he also using Ralph Nader as a messenger? What about all the other left-wing guys who write books for HarperCollins? And Crichton is not credible about climate change because he wrote Jurassic Park? He also wrote about time travel to 14th century France and an alien vessel at the bottom of the ocean. Does that mean he can no longer be credible on any subject? Do the "errors" in Madsen's column mean that Madsen can no longer be credible on any subject? The answer to one of these questions is "yes."
Unlike the "silly science" of Crichton, a group of 300 scientists recently concluded the Arctic is warming much more rapidly than previously known.
Disappearing are the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Arctic ice pack. Similar melting is occurring in Antarctica, with the largest recorded iceberg now causing devastation to indigenous species and science stations.
Crichton's fictional broadside against environmentalists comes at a time when the right wing and its corporate masters are stooping to all sorts of chicanery to muddy the waters in regard to global warming.
Whether Crichton is right or wrong, he has heavily documented his novel with references. He has footnotes, tables actually extracted from NASA databases in the text itself, and a lengthy annotated bibliography. In the novel he does address the question of the melting Arctic. Crichton does not say or even intimate that the Arctic ice cap isn't melting. Rather, he argues that it melts and refreezes with great volatility, and in recent times has been substantially smaller than it is today. He questions whether the current melting of the Arctic ice cap is a function of human activity, or simply a waning before another waxing.
Crichton does question whether Antarctic ice is melting. One character in the novel says that "one relatively small area called the Anarctic Peninsula is melting and calving huge icebergs. That's what gets reported year after year. But the continent as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker." Crichton cites peer-reviewed papers from Nature and Journal of Climate to back up his character's point. (pp. 193-195)
Some ludicrous right-wingers have even suggested that eminent global-warming experts like Rajendra K. Pachauri are somehow irresponsibly focusing the world's attention away from the war on Islamist terrorism.
More character assassination. Crichton is now associated with unnamed and uncited "ludicrous right-wingers."
And then comes along Crichton with his novel about global ecoterrorism. It is pathetic that the neoconservatives, mega- media perception managers and multinational corporations have resorted to such McCarthyite tactics to push their sordid and destructive agendas.
Madsen's attack on Crichton is riddled with misrepresentations (to be charitable) or lies (to be fair) about Crichton's work. Madsen smears Crichton's character, and associates Crichton with unnamed consipirators. While I have never understood precisely what people mean by "McCarthyite" tactics, if that term means anything useful it describes Madsen's unprincipled attack on Michael Crichton.
Read the book and decide for yourself.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Jan 07, 10:59:00 AM:
Jack,
Great post. I don't usually read Crichton but will be sure to pick up the book.
Scott @ POV
By 
Sluggo, at
Fri Jan 07, 12:28:00 PM:
Cannot wait to read the book.
I say we need a new word. "Fisking" fit a need. The need now is one word to describe a vicious, scurrilous, dishonest, hysterical accusation of another person's viciousness, scurrilousness, dishonesty and hysteria.
I propose knieveling after the old guy came out of the courtroom after a judge dismissed his defamation suit and called the judge a 'bimbo'.
http://sluggoneedsanap.blogspot.com/2005/01/has-been-gets-his-depends-in-bunch.html
I can't wait for the first post fisking someone for knieveling.
By , at
Sat Jan 08, 04:10:00 AM:
Jack -
You hit another long ball with this one, as did the previous commenter.
Jim
Parkway Rest Stop
http://parkwayreststop.com
By Carley, at
Sat Jan 08, 06:45:00 AM:
jack, nice post! i happen to like crichton's books, so i will pick up a copy and read it...
thanks, val
By , at
Thu Mar 31, 07:49:00 PM:
Jack,
Just finished the book, and I found it to be mediocre fiction, but very thought provoking. The first novel with a bibiligraphy and footnotes that I have ever seen.
I am a dedicated environmentalist and definitely not a Republican, so my sympathies are usually left-of-center. Enough questions were raised by Crichton that I have begun my own research to satisfy myself as to the "truth", but it is proving to be more difficult than I anticipated. As many internet sites defend the global warming issues as attack them. Most of the attackers are Republican/Right Wing and defenders are Democrat/Left Wing.
Where is the real science???? Is there any real science??? Is there any truth???
Charlie D
