State of Fear by Michael Crichton Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.12 You Save: $23.83 (85%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.58 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of State of Fear
Book Review: $4.95 is a lot to pay from Amazon for this book
Summary: 2 Stars
I have long been a fan of the taut generally fast moving techno thriller genre which have typified Michael Cricghton's books. Of course his books tend to stretch credibility but there has always been a thread of plausibility to them. It certainly ends with State of Fear. Eco terrorists perpetuating absurd environmental disasters on the world to advance their world hating agendas. Causing tsunamis for gosh sakes. Are you kidding me?
It becomes obvious pretty early that Crichton is a peak oil global warming denier.Why he thinks he can craft a novel with these themes is beyond me. He even goes so far at the end of the book to claim that by 2100 the world will have more wealth, more population and more energy than ever before and that global climate change is no real problem. It's one thing to downplay the influence of fossil fuel contributions to the mix. It's quite another thing to say it doesn't matter and things will continue on forever in true cornucopian hope and abundance. It doesn't help that his formulaic writing is starting to resemble the kind of pap put out by the likes of Tom Clancy. George Bush and Oklahoma's Senator Imhoffe loved the book. What else do you need to know?
Book Review: A Novel Way to Cool Global Warming's Hot Air
Summary: 4 Stars
Pretty hard to classify this book. It's a novel specifically written to undercut global warming and related tree-hugging enthusiasts, and it does a great job of that. Read the book for its arguments and references to scientific articles that show global warming to be much less the diamond-hard certainty today's Chicken Littles make it out to be. It throws more than a little skeptical sand into the global warming/carbon dioxide juggernaut's gears.
On the other hand, the clues Michael Crichton lays out in the book are terribly obvious--you know that George Morton is not dead, for example. And this fictive work carries the burden of being the vehicle not of entertainment but of instruction, which can seem somewhat propagandistic even when Crichton makes valid arguments. The instructive nature of this novel cannot but lend itself to making the characters two-dimensional and stiff. They speak on behalf of the worldview each represents, no more and no less. The foolish actor gets his in the end, the young lawyer gradually comes around to see the error of his unthinking global warming ways while nearly getting killed repeatedly, and the omnicompetent, Obi Wan Kenobi-like leader of the group is the walking encyclopedia on global warming weaknesses.
Still and all, I enjoyed the book reasonably well. It's worth having the book just as a reference for refuting the barrage of unsound environmental hysterics. A so-so novel, but a useful work for discerning truth.
Book Review: A Worthwhile Read
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a rather unique book in the sense that it is a cross between Fiction as well as Non-Fiction. The book causes one to think on many levels. A most interesting thought posited by the witer conerns the issue that America seems to want a major crisis as a rallying point. He goes back to the Second World War which was followed by Korea. Next came the Space Race followed by Vietnam which was foolowed by the Soviet Threat. One of the issues in this work is Global Warming. The author has an extensive bibliography and reminds the reader that there are two sides to each issue and that little is printed by those who are of the opinion that this issue is not as severe as many wish us to believe. The story moves along at a rather rapid pace and is a refrehingly good read. It begins slowly and some of the characters are not well developed. Some issues do not come to a full resolution by the end of this work. Yet, even with its faults, this makes for a compelling read.Book Review: A conflicted book - fun adventure, dubious pontificating
Summary: 3 Stars
Michael Crichton has made a name by taking a scientific principle or discovery and warping it into its most immediately dangerous extreme. In Jurassic Park, cloning is used to make dinosaurs, which wreak havoc. In Prey, nanotechnology creates a human-eating swarm intellegence. In State of Fear, the environmental movement becomes a terrorist organisation, manipulating scientists and the media to attempt to... actually, I'm not sure what they are attempting. This is the ultimate undoing of Crichton's narrative - the environmentalists are trying to convince the public of the truth of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming by using terrorist acts. Crichton never clarifies the what the goals of the environmental movement are (other than to ackowledge that they are right) - are they trying to get rich? Are they anarchists trying to destroy the social order? Are they communists trying to discredit capitalism? Does Crichton have such disdain for environmentalists that he thinks they have no goals? Is it because he became so lost in his own pontificating that he couldn't be bothered to give his antagonists a rationale? I can't help but compare this book to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, where the eco-terrorists have an elaborate plan to kill billions, but at least they have a specific goal in mind. Ultimately, Rainbow Six works and State of Fear doesn't for this very reason.
State of Fear also suffers from the same problem as Rising Sun. Crichton cannot help but expound his views (here on climate change, in Rising Sun on foreign ownership of U.S. corporations) in a series of lectures from his MIT prof to the other characters in his book (JP and Prey have far less of this, and are better as a result). All the characters in the environmental movement are stupid, lacking information, or otherwise woefully ignorant, allowing the anti-global warming characters to spout references and statistics at them unchallenged. Because of the one-sided nature of these exchanges, it would strongly suggest that Crichton is firmly toeing the "neo-conservative" mantra that states: (a) there's no evidence of global warming, (b) if there is warming, it's natural (not man-made), and (c) it doens't matter anyway, because a warmer planet is better.
That's not necessarily a reason to dislike the book - if you disagree with the science, it could mean that you are wrong, not Crichton. Unfortunately, Crichton does himself a diservice by being internally inconsistent and presenting some deliberately misleading facts. As an example of the first, he dismisses anthropogenic causes of global warming because the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is small (an increase of ~170 parts per million, a small absolute amount, but is actually a 50% increase (280 to 350 ppm)). Later in the book he claims that very small changes can have large unintended effects. But not when the atmosphere is involved? As an example of the second, he claims that DDT was banned even though it isn't carcinogenic (this is put forward as an example of bad science policy). This is true (DDT is not carcinogenic) but irrelevant - it was banned because it bioaccumulates in high-order predators and, for example, destroys the ability of birds of prey to reproduce because their eggshells are formed incorrectly. Yet none of the environmental characters challenges these errors, even though any environmental advocate would know this. When I see blatent scientific errors in areas inwhich I am well-educated (as a chemist), I cannot help but question all the supposed science presented by the author.
But! When Crichton is writing his adventure story, the book is a real page-turner. Crichton has always been better writing about technology (the use of science) than about science itself, and his creative use of a wave generator, precision explosives, and cavitation generators almost make up for the slow slogging in other parts of the book. Sure, the main characters cheat death more often than James Bond, but you don't care because it's so cleverly written and the dangers are new ones - like being poisoned by octupi carried around by the eco-terrorists.
So, as Mark Twain says, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." In a moment of rare candor, Crichton himself points out that in such a complex and non-linear system as the atmosphere, the anti-global warming research is as likely to be wrong as the pro-global warming research. Thus, skip over the global warming lectures given in the book - they are unreliable and annoying. Stick to the adventure story which is entertaining and exciting.
Book Review: A non-fiction book would have been better/Make your own judgment
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a big Crichton fan but this is one of his poorest novels, the plot is so exaggerated and unrealistic, as much, as he did in "Next" or "The Lost World" (JP II), his worst work. The main characters look like cartoon superheroes hoping around the World, and they could have resolved many of the predicaments they went in just by asking for help outside of their group, but instead, they brought with them Hollywood stars!?. It looks a lot like a script for a kid's movie, full of fast unrealistic action.
The message of the novel is a completely different thing. Polemical as you can conclude from the book reviews. MC wants us to be aware of the exaggerations the media, the environmentalists, and now the politicians, are making of Global Warning. MC is challenging the predictions of a theory based almost entirely on simulation models of a complex system (explained with chaos theory), with the first estimates made in the 90's already showing predictions completely off the charts. We are incapable of forecasting the weather one year from today, but we are ready to accept estimates with a precision of one decimal, regarding the future temperatures in the Amazon Basin and elsewhere 20 years from now?. Are we that gullible? Or is this just a noble cause that we have to support, no questions asked?
Remember that popular wisdom is not always right, as MC clearly illustrates in Appendix I, "Why politicized Science is Dangerous" regarding the theory of eugenics. Also, as the late Carl Sagan used to say, and Richard Dawkins is now remembering to us: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And don't forget that "anecdotal evidence is not proof". As contrary to law, in science the burden of proof is always on the side of those making the new claim or theory. Hence, from a strictly scientific skeptical point of view, Michael Crichton criticism or doubts are absolutely valid, whether we don't like it is a different matter.
It is understandable that highway safety, anti-smoking and other pro-health related media campaigns are exaggerated or overstated, even by MDs, just for the sake of changing a dangerous behavior within a population. The same concept is absolutely valid regarding the protection of the environment, avoiding pollution, but as MC asserts regarding specifically for Global Warming, all the fuss is based on simulation of a phenomena we still don't fully understand, without enough solid scientific evidence, with anecdotal evidence, and even with conveniently biased sets of data. MC also made a warning about the dangers and consequences of taking action when lots of uncertainty still exists, and when clearly Western society does not even know how to do wilderness management properly, or our poor ability to predict the weather in the short and long term. The mean temperature in the Antarctica continent has in fact been declining for the last two decades (check by yourselves through an internet search), but the media is only concerned about one piece that went afloat, and when actual data contradicts the Global Warming theory, some scientists simply claim those statistics are incomplete, but not theirs?.
Based on the amount of technical and scientific information presented in the novel (even with references to web sites, footnote references and a full bibliography, that gives you a chance to check the facts by yourself), obviously based on a throughout research on the subject, I guess a non-fiction book (Carl Sagan style) would have been a better medium to deliver his message, rather than through this weak fiction novel. I really would like Crichton to write a book on this polemical subject, no fiction in it, analyzing both sides of the issue (Bush and Al Gore included), rigorously, the way Richard Dawkins bravely writes his books.
Many people didn't like Crichton's critical or skeptical position on Global Warming, especially the environmental groups and the scientists who did the research to support the theory, and they just dismiss him as crazy, or working for big industry interests, or manipulating research results, or simply asserting the whole thing inside the book is just fiction, summarized by the now famous quotation: "Going to "State of Fear" for any facts on global warming is like going to "The Da Vinci Code" for facts on the life of Jesus". But please, just be a little skeptical for a few minutes, and make your own judgment by checking on the rebuttals available in the internet. Wikipedia is a good starting point, just type "State of Fear". A couple of good examples presenting serious rebuttals are found at the sites of Real Climate and the Pew Center on Climate Change. Check also supporting views for Crichton criticism. Watch Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth". Read carefully, balancing the different points of view, and make your own conclusions. And remember, the burden of proof is on those making the extraordinary claim, that's how the scientific method works.
And finally, for those so blinded because of his criticism to global warming, please cool off and read carefully the "Author's Message" at the end of the book, where he makes explicit his position, guesses and thoughts on this issue. Michael Crichton is not against the environment, he is not Pro-Bush, he is just against the waste of resources based on a theory lacking enough hard scientific proof, especially when so many respectable scientists and intellectuals are on board this near-hysterical cause, and a few people is taking personal advantage of all the frenzy.
PS: as suggested by a fellow Amazonian, The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction (Apollo's Arrow in the Canadian version) by David Orrell is an objective critical analysis of modeling for future predictions in the fields of climate, health and economics. If your are genuinely interested in the limitations and uncertainties of the science behind Global Warming, this book is a must-read. For less biased and common sense criticism I also recommend reading The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so and An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming