Well here is the interview from CNN .
The book is fiction and should be treated as such. If you have a problem with the underlying ideas then you need to refute the cites in the 14 page bibliography. I have not seen it so I can’t render an opinion but Crichton is laying his source material out there for everyone to see.
Hmmm.
In 1992, the “Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming,” garnered more than 100 signatures; it dissented from the idea that gobal warming is the result of human activities.
So did the 1992 “Heidelberg Appeal,” with more than 4,000 signatures; the 1996 “Leipzig Declaration,” signed by some 130 prominent U.S. climate scientists, including several who participated in the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); and, this year, the “Oregon Petition” which has been signed thus far by 17,000 U.S. scientists.
That seems to be dissent on a fairly large scale.
Nothing in the book about Unix. They just talk about either the Crays or “the computer”. The movie had a Thinking Machines computer in the background and Silicon Graphics Unix workstations that Nedry was working on.
I’m sensitive to all of this because the front panel of a computer I was working on was going to be the one used in the movie but they decided the Thinking Machines lights were cooler (they were right BTW, that was a beautiful machine).
You’ve been had. The Oregon petition is clearly a misinformation attempt (misleading psuedo-scientific article included, false names on petition, only Bachelor’s of Science required to sign). The Heidelberg Appeal does not contradict global warming in any way, and the Leipzig Declaration seems questionable in similar ways as the Oregon petition.
Read my cite on consensus again. Then tell me which peer-reviewed articles have rejected the IPCC’s conclusions.
You have to forgive Bricker, he gets his news from Fox. 
The problem with this issue is that there is an awful lot of pseudoscience and partisan funded science going on on both sides of the argument.
Personally, I think “global warming” is a misnomer, a poor label placed on a hodgepodge of issues and concerns.
Is the earth getting warmer? Yes, it seems to be, but then, we are coming out of an ice age so that might be normal.
On the other side of the coin, they used to grow oranges in Georgia but the frost line seems to be moving South which would indicate things getting cooler.
Then there’s the major climate change that occured in the 1800s right before the industrial revolution where global temperatures seemed to plummet. Maybe inustrialization is keeping us out of another ice age.
Ya lays down your money, and ya takes yer pick. These are all suppositions, hypothesis.
Global warming really shouldn’t concern us. Some intemperate areas will become temperate and some temperate areas will become intemperate. The global temperature trends are in flux. They always have been.
Trying to attribute what portion of global temperature trend change is attributable to human activity seems to me to be about as useful and likely as attributing the effect of a butterfly fart on a hurricane five years ago.
The temperatures will fluctuate, the climate will change.
I’m really not that concerned about it, and I think it’s kind of silly for other people to be worried about it, and I think the ecologically-minded have made a grave mistake by framing their concerns in the “global warming” theme.
What I am concerned about is the fact that the earth has not always been habitable, and there is no guarrantee that it will remain habitable. The more of an effect that we allow ourselves to have on the earth, the greater the chance that we will destabilize things to render the earth more difficult if not inhospitable for life.
Further, the earth contains limited resources which are being consumed.
The most empirically measurable effect we are having upon the earth is in global co2 levels. They are rising, oxygen levels are dropping. This is occuring because we are burning things and converting oxygen into CO2 at prodigious levels.
Based on this escalating consumption of fossil fuels it is reasonable to assume that we are going to run into a problem when the supply starts to run low.
Perhaps we will run out and be forced to do something else for power, or live with less power, and the earth will easily absorb the damage that we have done, the way the parent absorbs a blow from his/her three year old.
Or, perhaps our CO2 use will cause algae blooms, killing all the fish, leading to starvation, rioting, slash and burn agriculture, massive coal burning by the third world until the air is virtually unbreathable and we all have to live indoors.
I think the only reasonable conclusion is that our indiscriminate use of resources and burning of fossil fuel is unsustainable, is having a detrimental effect upon the environment, and that alternatives need to be found.
But, I don’t really give a shit about “global warming.” It’s kind of cold around here, and if Ocean levels rose to make the Lehigh Valley beachfront property and I could sit under palm trees in my backyard sipping Pina Coladas admiring my wife in her bikini instead of messing with the snowblower… …well, I could manage to struggle on.
Not being able to breather would suck though.
Instead of “global warming” why don’t we call it “global suffocation” or “NO FUCKING AIR!”
I must have been mistaken. I thought the little boy in the book referred to the computer on which the fence and security system controls were as a Unix computer.
I have a number of strong objections to the following sort of thing. In general terms, petitions are not science. They don’t give any detailed reasoning, they don’t address specific evidence, and they are self-selecting samples with very poor monitoring of who is signing. Fundamentally, the atmosphere does not give a flying fuck about signatures, and signatures tell us absolutely nothing about how the atmosphere works. Specific issues:
A trivial point; I count no more than 50 signatures. The statement does not deny global warming, but merely insists there is no consensus, and warns against rushing to global regulation.
This also does not deny global warming; it merely contends that it doesn’t matter, and that we should just not worry about it. They’ve got some impressive signatories, though. Some Nobel prize-winners, in fact. Of course, just skimming through the list I see that one’s an endocrinologist, there’s some cell biologists, a theoretical physicist or two; not exactly climatologists. And this is just the select list of names they thought were good enough to put up on the website.
And including numerous (30-odd) TV meteorologists, more than half of them from Fox, funnily enough. The objections above also apply. Oh, and apparently they changed the statement after Kyoto and left the original signatures up, “pending verification” of course.
I could sign that, and they’d accept me. My MSc is in computing. What the hell do I know about the climate?
Yes, but it is scientists dissenting, not scientific dissent. I’m not saying the latter doesn’t exist, but these ludicrous petitions are most certainly not it.
Even if one does accept that these petitions are denying global warming, they represent self-selecting samples that vary in size solely depending on how low you set your sights. They’re not even as good as polls, inasmuch as no right of reply is given; we have no idea what proportion of scientists would dissent from the statement, or how. The language is given free reign to be as woolly as is convenient, because they know the newspaper articles will read “17,000 scientists disagree with global warming”, no matter how ludicrous a simplification this really is. And don’t think I’m saying this because I’m an environmental nut; I tend to keep an open mind on global warming, simply because I don’t know enough to be able to make a judgment. It just pisses me off when scientists abuse their position like this, no matter what cause they’re promoting.
When I was taking Environmental Science, I learned that it’s not called “global warming” anymore, it’s called “global climate change”.
We were also taught that there is nothing inherently wrong with climate change, it’s the fact that if changes happen quickly enough, it will mean floods, mudslides and other Acts of Gawd that will cause much human suffering.
Interestingly, there are global discussions about this issue going on right now. I saw references to this on the news tonight.
As it was stated on the news I saw, those 9 of the past 10 years have been 9 of the top 10 warmest years on record, not just “among the warmest” on record.
I will try to find a better link…
The obvious, of course is the fact that, while he does write an entertaining fiction book, the man is quite nuts. If you haven’t, check out Travels, which is basicly his autobiography.
I’m not saying I’m normal, but this is one fucked up guy.
Well, let’s see…he put himself through medical school by writing books (when most aspiring writers can’t even get their work looked at by publishers); he graduated med school and put in a year of residency before deciding to become a writer full-time; excerpts of his first book under his own name was published in Playboy; he learned the movie business and directed big name actors, including Sean Connery, in a big-budget movie; he learned how to write programs and formed a software company that won an Academy Award for technical excellence for developing software to handle movie-making finances; he’s become the hugely successful writer of books that we’ve all come to know; he created one of the most popular television programs in recent history (E.R.); he’s travelled the world and seen and experienced interesting things that most of us will never see or experience; he’s spent a great deal of time with many of the most interesting scientists, researchers and captains of industry in the world; and he’s a discerning appreciator and collector of works of art, including Picasso, Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns.
I should be so fucked up.
I do know what you’re talking about, though. There is some odd stuff in Travels, but nothing that rises to the level of insanity in my opinion…and after all, the guy is a genius, you know.
(I guess maybe I am an apologist for him, after all.)
Coming out of an ice age? Aren’t we overdue for one?
(For the nitpicky, I know that the Earth doesn’t have a digital alarm clock inside and we didn’t miss our oppointment for the August 12th Ice Age, but isn’t the current time since the last ice age longer than the average time between ice ages?)
Crighton recently wrote an opinion piece for Parade Magazine, where he talks about how the fears prompted since around the 1960s haven’t come to pass. Personally, I think that some of the reason things aren’t as bad as it was theorized that they could be, is because changes were made to help the problems. I’m curious about his zillion page bibliography and will have to check it out. Some of his books have been greatly enjoyed by my family, others not so much. I’ve always been fond of the idea of the second island relating to Jurassic Park, the down and dirty island where the real science happened and things weren’t seemingly perfect. Too bad that as a whole, the book wasn’t terribly amazing, and the movie … oi. Looks like we’re going to pass on his latest book too.
Holy shit, Crichton is writing non-fiction novels that are being considered as textbooks for Environmental Studies courses?!? Man, is that guy trying to dominate every facet of publishing?
How’s this for consensus?
The consensus is that
We are trapped in a room with a complicated device which we know has exploded in the past. It might go off anyway, but shouldn’t we stop hitting it with a stick?
I like Crichton’s books, they are fun to read.
I’m perfectly capable of distinguishing a fictional novel from scientific fact. YMMV.
I’m in the middle of this book and it seems to that Crichton’s contention is that much of the research that backs warming wasn’t done properly (ie double-blind).
If the science wasn’t done properly, then doesn’t he have a point?
:dubious: Definition of double-blind. How would we blind the climate to the research hypotheses and methods? Or, on the other hand, how could the climate not be blind to the research hypotheses and methods?
One would presume that during the accumulation of the massive consensus that has been achieved among researchers in this area, that problematic methodology would have been ID’ed by now. Mass stupidity or collusion among researchers is a serious claim. Have any evidence to back it up?
This “consensus” and “researchers” you speak of obviously have a flagrant and shameless reality bias, and should be discounted immediately.
CRICHTON WINS!