Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" Predicted the Climate Change Hysteria

State of Fear is perhaps Crichton's most thought provoking, if not most disturbing, novel. The story is a heart-pounding thriller about extremist environmentalists who will stop at nothing to implement their agenda. Standing in their way is protagonist Peter Evans, an environmental attorney who is gradually transformed from a credulous supporter of the environmental movement to an open minded skeptic who understands the dangers of group think. 

In this story, Crichton makes a compelling case that the environmental movement has turned into a self-serving cult that endeavors to perpetuate itself at any cost. The author highlights the motivations of the myriad environmental organizations with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars (Sierra Club $144million in 2019). With this much money and thousands of employees working for these organizations, the logic of the "self-licking ice cream cone" takes hold (whereby an organization must constantly find reasons for its existence and its budgets). The story nails the point by describing the numerous environmental conferences and other "media events" that these organizations must pay for. 

Another salient point is how environmental scientists and advocates have created a narrative that conflates the concepts of "abrupt climate change" and "global warming." This is done so that even an unusual cold spell in any part of the world can be attributed to global warming. According to a prophetic passage in the novel:
"global warming is unsatisfactory because whenever there is a cold snap, people forget about it. So what you need is to structure the information so that whatever kind of weather occurs, it always confirms your message. There will always be floods, freezing storms, cyclones, and hurricanes. In every instance you can claim it as an example of abrupt climate change caused by global warming."

Crichton's characters do an excellent job warning the reader about the dangers of group think that result in a "consensus" regarding global warming by scientists and the media. The point is a driven home that "climate change" has occurred constantly during the past 5 Billion years on planet Earth. The most germane fact is that over the past 700 thousand years, planet Earth has experienced "a geological ice age characterized by advancing and retreating glacial ice. The last advance was twenty thousand years ago, we're do for the next one. Our atmosphere is as violent as the land beneath it." These facts are used by the characters to show how foolish and arrogant it is for humans to believe they can "stabilize" the atmosphere. 

The author highlights a specific personality type that engages in environmentalism. This is the same type of person that is currently funding the social chaos in the US. Accordingly, guilt-ridden limousine liberals are represented by "Ted Bradley" and "Ann Garner" in the story. Ted and Ann believe people around the world should give up modern conveniences because they are "heating up the planet." They also believe that "everyone in the world should live in villages", and developing nations "should not be encouraged to industrialize." Ann is a rich housewife who lives in a "twelve thousand square foot" mansion, drives an SUV, has a vacation house in Aspen, and loves to "catch rides" on private jets. Ted is a wealthy actor who stays in expensive hotels and also drives luxury cars. This is a perfect illustration of the "conservation for thee but not for me" principle as well as the hypocrisy of those funding the environmental movement. 

Throughout the novel Crichton furnishes numerous graphs and charts from NASA that clearly indicate global temperatures have NOT risen uniformly around the globe over the last 140 years. In the US, the temperature has risen only "a third of a degree" between 1880 and 2000 and temperatures in the early 2000's "are roughly the same as they were in the 1930s." 

It's important to remember that Michael Crichton was not a "science denier" or a religious fanatic opposed to rational thinking. On the contrary, the author was a Harvard trained MD who has written numerous thrillers about everything from dinosaur DNA, to medicine, to robots and computers. Crichton was also not a lobbyist or an executive of an energy company. He was a wealthy novelist who did not need to take money from anyone and presumably followed the data using logic. His conclusions should be a wake up call for everyone. 

Crichton makes a compelling case that although we should take care to "manage" the environment in a responsible (data driven) manner, we should not get caught up in the "global warming" hysteria. There are forces out there trying to sell a narrative for self-serving reasons. As Crichton pointed out in a series of lectures, science is not about consensus. There should always be room for skeptics in science, and if that space disappears (as skeptics are forced to agree with the prevailing consensus) we are likely headed toward a new Dark Age.

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