— A review of the new Michael Crichton book.
A right-winger attacks global warming – PittsburghLIVE.com
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 Harper Collins, 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, center, or right-wing magazine editor; cartoonist; or research institute fellow to allow himself or herself to become human versions of coin-operated nickelodeons or Laundromats.
Journalist Wayne Madsen knows better than to think that Crichton does anything other than write cool stories for money. Crichton is not beholding to Murdoch as part of some grand scheme, that’s for sure. This review is nonsense. How did global warming become a right-wing versus left-wing issue? When science becomes politicized, then something is wrong.
Michael Crichton’s piece was fantastic. Make far more sense than anything the left says.
I have not turned on the news this morning. I only hear the hum of technology.
What lesson will this world teach me today? What is going to humble me before this great mirror?
I’ll look into the emails and forums and gather my opinions.
Let’s look.
Minimize! Contact!
Scroll! Contact!
New Year! Contact!
Tom! Don’t blow anybody’s mind!
Apologize for being so crude!
Good writers can turn the earth over and sweeten the pot.
I’ll step toward protecting the environment, I’ll compost the earth.
I’ll grow my life without trash and litter on the highways.
I’ll protect this little space I have in Kentucky and tell those Greek Gods to go to hell.
Happy New Year John!
Tomas
I was under the impression that although scientists all agree that global warming is happening, there is quite a bit of disagreement over the cause of global warming. The environmentalists (generally the Left) believe that industrialization is the cause, while the other side of the argument (presumably the Right) dispute that claim and instead suggest that it might be part of the planet’s normal climate cycle. If industrialization is truly the cause, then the solutions would require drastic changes costing billions of dollars. Given all that I can see how this issue has become politicized.
You are absolutely correct about Crichton. He’s a fiction writer. He has no obligation to make his stories scientifically accurate. Further, he does not have to care whether he offends anyone or not. He just has to make a good yarn that sells.
“When did global warming become a right-wing vs. left-wing issue?” Simple… when the left-wing aligned with the environmentalist movement against business, and business aligned with the Republican Party in order to impede the regulations that the environmentalists wanted. And before someone thinks I’m on the side of business always, I know these are the guys who say that any new regulation will put them out of business. “If we have to take lead out of gasoline, the industry will collapse.” “If we can’t dump so much waste in the rivers, or cut the tops off the mountains, our industry will collapse.” But then, the environmentalists have a problem with crying wolf too many times… population bomb, nuclear winter and global freezing. I think that’s the problem today. Global warming (despite Crichton’s insistance otherwise) is a big problem, and pretty much all independent scientists believe so. But industry wants to confuse the issue so to keep the profits rather than spending it on modifications and research to reduce greenhouse gasses.
Here’s something funny. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (the newspaper linked to in the post), is funded by Richard Mellon Scaife and known for its conservative opinion page (and some would allege its conservative slant on the news).
Also, here’s an interesting climate change blog. It sides on the presumption that climate change is real and is man-made.
Real Climate. There’s probably another one that will try to debunk it, and perhaps a blog debunking that blog. But to start, you can start here, and look at the data for yourself (after separating it from the commentary), or find some contrary data and bring it to their attention.
How can there not be global warming? Humans consume large amounts of energy; the laws of thermodynamics say that most energy is lost as heat.
If we use billions of barrels of oil per day, tons of electricity, heating oil, natural gas … even in a zero pollution scenario the heat output is going to be substantial.
A better question is global warming bad? I don’t think so.
Global warming is inevitable, we cannot consume massive amounts of energy without heating the environment.
If global warming is inevitable, and I think it is, then even the question of whether or not global warming is bad is of limited use. I don’t like the idea of taxes or death or having to work or getting old, but it is a waste of breath to worry about the inevitable.
As far as environmentalism is concerned, a substantial number of species are not going to exist in the future. This is not bad, this is just the way of things. We should try to preserve as much of it as we can, digitize DNA and photos and whatever else we can for historical reference.
Modern humans will cease to exist in the future (500 or less years out) as we will genetically alter our own DNA and cease to be the homo sapiens we are today. So, many things are going to be extinct in the future, including homo sapiens: it’s just the way of things.
The future isn’t going to be bad, just different.
Wasn’t the original big deal about climate supposed to be about global cooling? And what about Krakatoa causing sunsets to be spectacular for three years after its eruption, along with noticeable climate change? Then there’s Greenland, a Viking farming colony. I guess it was a bit warmer a few dozen centuries ago.
Sorry, my #8 was referring specifically to the opening sentence (which for some reason didn’t get included in my post):
“In today’s world of increasing corporate control of almost every facet of our public and private lives..”
I guess it makes a nice sound bite. But no connection to reality whatsoever.
Reminds me of the Tim Robbins character in “Team America” –
“Corporations are bad because they’re…they’re corporationey and they make money!”
While it’s true that the Earth has warmed slightly, there is nothing unusual about this – the Earth was actually warmer during the “Medieval Warm Period” during the first quarter of the last millenium.
And what’s so bad about having palm trees in Sweden?