... becomes a religion.

A while back, I put up a post concerning an interesting quote by renown author Michael Crichton. At the time, I wrote the post addressing it as an amusingly insightful comment from an author who knows a fair bit of science, and left it at that. Unfortunately, I wrote my my post with some degree of ignorance.

Mr. Crichton is considerably more than just an author and filmmaker. He graduated from Harvard College with a degree in anthropology (summa cum laude, no less), proceeded to earn his MD from Harvard Medical School, and then proceeded to work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies right here in Kalifornistan. Since then, he has taught at Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in addition to writing over 20 books and 9 movies. So, yes, an author, but also a little bit more than that, in the end summation.

Recently, Mr. Crichton has penned State of Fear, which basically boils down to being a novelization of information and statistics disproving the theory of "global warming". Unfortunately, this has garnered it all manner of negative publicity and press, as "activists" predominantly attack it simply because it speaks out against the current religion-of-the-masses - a heresy generally punishable by death (normally academic/economic/social death, but who knows what the acolytes might eventually move on to?). However, buried in the story of the book, and hidden behind all of the reflexive assaults against the book, Mr. Crichton, and everything he has suggested, one finds some interesting information. A lot of this information is laid to light in this article.

One of the characters of the book accurately characterizes the religion of "global warming" as follows:

... global warming is the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases are causing an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere because of the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’ (p. 81, italics in the original)

The book continues with the following interesting statements:

• most of the warming in the past century occurred before 1940, before CO2 emissions could have been a major factor (p. 84);
• temperatures fell between 1940 and 1970 even as CO2 levels increased (p. 86);
• temperature readings from reporting stations outside the U.S. are poorly maintained and staffed and probably inaccurate; those in the U.S., which are probably more accurate, show little or no warming trend (pp. 88-89);
• "full professors from MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Duke, Virginia, Colorado, UC Berkeley, and other prestigious schools ... the former president of the National Academy of Sciences ... will argue that global warming is at best unproven, and at worst pure fantasy" (p. 90);
• temperature sensors on satellites report much less warming in the upper atmosphere (which the theory of global warming predicts should warm first) than is reported by temperature sensors on the ground (p. 99);
• data from weather balloons agree with the satellites (p. 100);
• "No one can say for sure if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds," yet cloud cover plays a major role in global temperatures (p. 187);
• Antarctica “as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker” (p. 193, sources listed on p. 194);
• The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica has been melting for the past 6,000 years (p. 195, p. 200-201); “Greenland might lose its ice pack in the next thousand years” (p. 363);
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is “a huge group of bureaucrats and scientists under the thumb of bureaucrats,” and its 1995 report was revised “after the scientists themselves had gone home” (p. 245-246);
• James Hansen’s predictions of global warming during a Congressional committee hearing in 1988, which launched the global warming scare, were wrong by 200 percent (.35 degrees Celsius over the next 10 years versus the actual increase of .11 degrees); in 1998, Hansen said long-term predictions of climate are impossible (pp. 246-247);
• there has been no increase in extreme weather events (.e.g., floods, tornadoes, drought) over the past century or in the past 15 years; computer models used to forecast climate change do not predict more extreme weather (p. 362, 425-426);
• temperature readings taken by terrestrial reporting stations are rising because they are increasingly surrounded by roads and buildings which hold heat, the “urban heat island” effect (p. 368-369);
• methods used to control for this effect fail to reduce temperatures enough to offset it (p. 369-376);
• changes in land use and urbanization may contribute more to changes in the average ground temperature than “global warming” caused by human emissions (p. 383, 388);
• temperature data are suspect because they have been adjusted and manipulated by scientists who expect to find a warming trend (p. 385-386);
• carbon dioxide has increased a mere 60 parts per million since 1957, a tiny change in the composition of the atmosphere (p. 387);
• increased levels of CO2 act a fertilizer, promoting plant growth and contributing to the shrinking of the Sahara desert (p. 421);
• the spread of malaria is unaffected by global warming (pp. 421-422, footnotes on 422);
• sufficient data exist to measure changes in mass for only 79 of the 160,000 glaciers in the world (p. 423);
• the icecap on Kilimanjaro has been melting since the 1800s, long before human emissions could have influenced the global climate, and satellites do not detect a warming trend in the region (p. 423); deforestation at the foot of the mountain is the likely explanation for the melting trend (p. 424);
• sea levels have been rising at the rate of 10 to 20 centimeters (four to eight inches) per hundred years for the past 6,000 years (p. 424);
• El Niños are global weather patterns unrelated to global warming and on balance tend to be beneficial by extending growing seasons and reducing the use of heating fuels (p. 426);
• the Kyoto Protocol would reduce temperatures by only 0.04 degrees Celsius in the year 2100 (p. 478);
• a report by scientists published in Science concludes “there is no known technology capable of reducing [global] carbon emissions ... totally new and undiscovered technology is required” (p. 479); change, not stability, is the defining characteristic of the global climate, with naturally occurring events (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis) much more likely to affect climate than anything humans do (p. 563); and
• computer simulations are not real-world data and cannot be relied on to produce reliable forecasts (p. 566).

Understandably the death... er... "global warming"... cultists have taken a certain amount of umbrage concerning the accusations leveled by Mr. Crichton, and done absolutely everything they can to discredit him and that which he has suggested.

Unfortunately for them, Mr. Crichton is right.

Of course, in a small personal victory, it also turns out I might be right in saying that attributing global changes in the environment's temperature to anything except the sun is outright foolishness... but that is a small thing.

So no, Mr. Crichton is not a climatologist or meteorologist, but he is far from being an unintelligent person, and he definitely knows how to do his homework.

The same could not be said about those cultists currently supporting the popular science-by-consensus theory of "global warming". Of course, for those of you who are not swayed by factual information, feel free to head over to UltimateGlobalWarmingChallenge.com. Not only has the prize money gone unclaimed for 55 days, it recently just went up to $125 grand. Not exactly chump change... but it does kind of make one wonder why all of those people who take a theory as God's Word From On High And Hand-Delivered By Throngs Of Angels are unwilling to step up and have a shot at some free money. Got me.

Hat tip to Cao.

Trackposted to Nuke's, , Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Rosemary's Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Big Dog's Weblog, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Cao's Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Stageleft, The Yankee Sailor, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.