I went through this process regarding global warming starting in 2009 as an adult with a background of a degree in organic chemistry, and I came out skeptical of the IPCC consensus perspective. This is background to understand how serious is the educational propagation of the man-made climate change notion. This occurs because it is even more painful to discard a gestalt that I used to organize my thinking, since I now become disoriented, unable to process new information that comes to me. Over time, I accept any and all information that reinforces my gestalt, and become increasingly resistant to facts that challenge or contradict my paradigm. This occurs because uncertainly and ambiguity is uncomfortable, even painful if the matter is of great consequence. Fairly soon, however, I am likely to form a gestalt, or paradigm that makes sense of what I know, which involves discounting or dismissing facts that don’t fit. Thus, on a topic where I have no opinion, my mind is open to various perspectives. It was a wake up call for some, and for others, like myself, it was an inoculation against the viral media onslaught to come.Įdward De Bono wrote extensively some decades ago on the subject of lateral thinking, or “thinking outside of the box.” His studies of human problem solving showed emphatically that everything depends on the sequence in which information enters a person’s awareness. Judging by what others have said on blogs, I was not the only one for whom this book triggered a skeptical stance toward global warming alarm. The appendices got into my awareness much more than did the story itself. And there were transcripts of Crichton speeches that laid waste to climate claims. His other novels were much more compelling: Jurassic Park, Congo, Disclosure, Air Frame, to name a few.īut State of Fear included not only a novel, but many pages of graphs and analyses that showed the weaknesses in alarmist claims. I was reading anything Crichton wrote because of my interest in science and technology, and his focus on the near future effects. To be honest, I was not that thrilled reading the story in 2005, lacking any awareness that such a campaign was underway. In particular, the attitudes and behavior of climate fear mongers in the novel seemed incredible at the time, but were validated in spades by the Climategate revelations.
His novel “State of Fear” presaged the media circus of the last decade since the book appeared in 2004. I am grateful for Michael Crichton speaking out so forcefully and effectively on global warming before he died in 2008.
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