Global warming, Michael Crichton, State of fear and some views
You have heard about global warming, everyone has. Believed and taut as one of the greatest threats of the century’s environment. Most nerve-racking, and rest-robing, a threat. People, when they heard about the global warming phenomenon during the close of 1989, believed it all outright, because it was not merely proposed by a bunch of amatuers as a story idea for their looming-in-horizon film, but stated by environmentalists with guiding support from the scientific study into ecology and atmosphere, virtually enunciating that the global warming exists and would breake out abrupt enviromental changes, resulting in storms, hurricanes and tsunamies, which would shatter us all of a sudden.
All this was believed over the years by many men, it’s all perhaps because of the encyclopedia articles supporting this, scientific reports, and seminars by environmental organizations. All this set the idea of global warming to the minds of the people rock-firm.
But is this threat to any degree a real one for us? That’s a question to be debated pretty much nowadays. We have to. And I was guided into this dispute by the recent Michael Crichton novel I occasioned to come by. It all dealt mostly with the environment and its threats. Until now I was an ardent believer of global warming and its cause, the greenhouse effect. But I guess not any more.
The novel…
It starts with a global earth summit, when the Atlantic Island nation of Vanautu, which in the novel is Vanutu, declares to file a lawsuit against the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the Federal district court of Los Angeles. It was John Balder, known to have lost no lawsuit whatsoever, that was going to brawl for Vanautu. And an environmental activist organization called NERF headed by an ex-attorney, Nicholas Drake comes forth with support. And for the lawsuit, millions of dollars would be required. And its then, the millionaire philanthropist, George Morton (a very close friend of everyone, and Nick Drake in particular) steps in and offers to take up the expenses. He sets up papers to dispatch an amount of ten million in favor of NERF and Drake for this purpose.
And then mysteriously a Harward professor and law enforcement person of immense personal power and knowledge, John Kenner steps in and holds a talk with Morton. The next thing we know is, Morton is stepping back from the financing of the lawsuit and then after few days, he is mysteriously disappeared out of a car crash. Then his body was washed ashore yet another week back. From then on, our Harward don takes up the role of the protogonist, failing us never, to entertain.
As the plot advances, lots of adventure involving Morton’s secretary, Sarah, his attorney, a young fellow of the name Peter Evans, and John Kenner take place.
And about the lawsuit, before the death, Morton had asked Evans to draft papers to limit the sum offered to NERF to fifty thousand per week, instead of a direct offering of ten million, and the reason for this abrupt change of attitude is viciously unknown. That enrages and unnerves an already jangled Drake, who was also a client of Evans’s firm. One of the most potential clients. He is worried in particular because there is a big (presumably) seminar coming up about abrupt climactic changes headed by the NERF. At this point, suspicions loom large in the minds of Morton, Evans, Sarah and Kenner that it is for this seminar, that Drake wants the money desperately and not to back the lawsuit; all the recent developments point that way. And why would a simple seminar need so much as ten million dollars? A sure raiser of eybrows. The answer lies all through the book, from the landscapes of Los Angeles to icecaps of Antartica, from tingling technical terms to crushing adventures and from nerve racking discoveries of big treason and trechery to awe inspiring escapades of the fair men from deadly plots and plans.
In the meanwhile, the Vanutu lawsuit team prepares (or does it merely show that it does) a hardcore lawsuit by making indepth study of all the evidence that can potentially support their claim of the existance of global warming. All they had to do was to make the jury, who already were quite knowledgeable in the threat of global warming, think that there actually existed something like it, and that would sink the island nation with ten thousand or so inhabitants. And it would, to naked eye, look quite a breeze of a case to win. But the facts point the opposite way, the EPA and industry giants look most probable to win the case. None of the scientific evidence regarding environment points to the remotest existence of global warming. And it would look like they had already known that.
John Balder, the attorney that was to head the litigation assures in one of the scenes in the novel to Peter Evans that they were sure hundred per cent to win the case at hand, and at the same time, he said the chances were desperate, and the opposition had great points in their favor. And that makes Evans skeptical, as these are two contradictory statements, and he didnt feel confidence inthe manners of John Balder’s crew. Now the case was to prove that the global warming exists and is a potential threat to the whole of the world.
But the actual fact of the novel is that none of the datasets presented to the attorneys, gives a foolproof evidence of the remotest existence of this threat. In fact, it could be judged that this sort of a thing didnt exist at all and would never. It was merely a scam and one of the greatest on the planet and well nourished and endorsed by even the most famous of scientists. But an equal number of scientists just conducted experiments that merely proved that Global warming was a mere myth. For proof, the novel recites the rise in temperature in very many global cities in the past hundred years when the weather data showing climate change over a period of time was judged to be accurate to some degrees. That was all they had to submit, and the lawsuit now was hinged on the frail link of sea level data. For the purpose, Balder and his team collect accurate sea level rise information and find to their satisfaction or surprise that the sea level rose some millimeters in a hundred years. Not a concern at all for the island nation.
And another proposition is the Antartica’s icecaps are melting and increasing the sea level all over the planet. But according to the novel, Antartica is now cooling and it has always been. Its icecaps are most likely to grow thicker than softer.
So it was undoubtedly true that no such thing as global warming exists and it poses, at least right now, no threat whatsoever to the environment.
How much reliable these statements above are, since they are the elements of a work of fiction, is a topic to be fiercely debated. However, the writer is a commendable person, and has had successful works in the past to justify his claims. Crichton (pronounced Cry-ton), author of innumerable best sellers including the Jurassic Park series, is believed to be one of the finest science writers of the century, and one of the best characterizers. His works throng with lot of liveliness and action that keep your nerves tinckled at the extreme. Particularly, the ice crevasse adventure that Sara and Evans had in Antartica, the lightning strikes in the ghost town of Californian forests, and the attack by flash flood, all provide high tension and mounting thrill.
And at the middle of the novel, the lawsuit of the Vanutu is mysteriously dropped right after the first public announcement of that. They head for a court injunction instead. While all this is in progress, some other guys of the environment terrorist group, ELF, the Environmental Liberation Front, try to take control of the climate. This is pointing to the immense suspicion that man can control the weather. The weather control strategies have been developed and would prove to be one of the deadliest weapons with the military. And that may be why the military funds the weather control research, as speculated in the novel. A number of ways to control the weather are examined deeply, shown graphically and described carefully.
The novel altogether is a big success and one of the best scientific and action thrillers of the last few years . It is a very nice read, and anyone can savor its beauty and thrill and get carried away in the novelist’s world. I hope you get hold of this work and read it through. It wont disappoint you.
Well though, I am a great fan of Crichton, I wouldnt mind holding different opinion about certain thigs when they seem due. The novel, though a fast paced with lots and lots of action and hotness to appeal to your nerves, lags at some places. And one most obvious hitch is its high end science. Many terms are not familiar or common. It all are too high end technical, I would say. And the regular feel of an authority with indepth knowledge is all through the novel.
And the pluss: Indepth Indepth Indepth research on all topics, like all other Crichton works. He simply is a genius knowing how to do the research, how to frame ideas and how to get the radical point from the deeply technical data and express it perfectly through writing discourse. This makes his works differ in feel and pith, and even the ordinary men can read it and get the ideas easily though based on intense scientific research.
Now the question remains, whether global warming is a threat or not. As far as I am concerned, I never ever think that the earth can be very hot by the next twenty years or so, and low-lying areas all can be under water due to sea level rises. This all would look kind of fictional. I hope what Crichton tries to say is the truth. Global warming is fiction, folks! It never would happen, and never did either.
Posted by vjlenin 