LITERARY COMMENT
I finished Michael Crichton's STATE OF FEAR that I got for Christmas. It is a long book but an excellent comment on the damage created by environmental activists. The final chapter has an appropriate ending for one of the obnoxious Hollywood stars who spouted environmental messages that he knew nothing about. Reminded me of the ending of similar characters in one of Clancey's novels.
Crichton uses a lot of references to answer the myths about global warming to show that the temperature is not related to carbon dioxide production. CO2 has been increasing for years but the temperature varies within limits and has changed very little in history. He also makes excellent cases for the cost of environmental excesses like the ban of DDT that has caused over 50 million deaths due to malaria that was being well controlled before the ban. The use of more dangerous pesticides in place of DDT caused cancer deaths in crop workers. He tells of the millions of dollars in law suits going to lawyers over breast implants and quotes studies that show no damage to women from the implants. He didn't tell the story that I heard that the problems with breast implants was the use of talc on the rubber gloves used at that time that caused the problems.
The book title comes from his argument that the government, media and lawyers need an enemy to keep them going. Until the fall of Russia's communism the US had the fear of Russia launching a nuclear attack. After the Berlin wall fell, we needed some other Fear to replace it. In the media the terms crisis, catastrophe, cataclysm, plague and disaster appeared after 1989. There was heightened emphasis on fear, worry, danger uncertainty and panic. Social control by the government is best managed through fear. We have let the media and government control us and by onerous regulations have made a huge number of lawyers very wealthy by lawsuits.
One thing I appreciated was the way he bashes the use of complicated computer programs to create panic about what might happen in the highly complex area of weather prediction when the models are unable to predict anything accurately but are used to produce scary scenarios to fit the current crisis needed to provide funding for the researchers making the predictions. He says we should publish every computer simulation with the caveat that the results are computer generated and may be inaccurate. He would like to not use any simulation that can't predict temperatures accurately for a period of 10 or 20 years.
This is a must read book by everyone who cares about what our government, media and lawyers are doing to society. Global warming is just the current example of the state of fear.
I finished Michael Crichton's STATE OF FEAR that I got for Christmas. It is a long book but an excellent comment on the damage created by environmental activists. The final chapter has an appropriate ending for one of the obnoxious Hollywood stars who spouted environmental messages that he knew nothing about. Reminded me of the ending of similar characters in one of Clancey's novels.
Crichton uses a lot of references to answer the myths about global warming to show that the temperature is not related to carbon dioxide production. CO2 has been increasing for years but the temperature varies within limits and has changed very little in history. He also makes excellent cases for the cost of environmental excesses like the ban of DDT that has caused over 50 million deaths due to malaria that was being well controlled before the ban. The use of more dangerous pesticides in place of DDT caused cancer deaths in crop workers. He tells of the millions of dollars in law suits going to lawyers over breast implants and quotes studies that show no damage to women from the implants. He didn't tell the story that I heard that the problems with breast implants was the use of talc on the rubber gloves used at that time that caused the problems.
The book title comes from his argument that the government, media and lawyers need an enemy to keep them going. Until the fall of Russia's communism the US had the fear of Russia launching a nuclear attack. After the Berlin wall fell, we needed some other Fear to replace it. In the media the terms crisis, catastrophe, cataclysm, plague and disaster appeared after 1989. There was heightened emphasis on fear, worry, danger uncertainty and panic. Social control by the government is best managed through fear. We have let the media and government control us and by onerous regulations have made a huge number of lawyers very wealthy by lawsuits.
One thing I appreciated was the way he bashes the use of complicated computer programs to create panic about what might happen in the highly complex area of weather prediction when the models are unable to predict anything accurately but are used to produce scary scenarios to fit the current crisis needed to provide funding for the researchers making the predictions. He says we should publish every computer simulation with the caveat that the results are computer generated and may be inaccurate. He would like to not use any simulation that can't predict temperatures accurately for a period of 10 or 20 years.
This is a must read book by everyone who cares about what our government, media and lawyers are doing to society. Global warming is just the current example of the state of fear.
posted by Dr. Rodenberger at 10:37 AM
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