Michael Crichton's new book

**AmyBoz** · 05-06-2006, 11:13 AM

I just finished State of Fear, which is an interesting read. The reason I post it here is because the contention of the book is that global warming is not the crisis it has been made out to be. It's a story, obviously, but is full of real research and data and was really fascinating. It's tough to plow through, but worth it in the end.

**wendy** · 05-07-2006, 09:43 PM

I've never read any of his books. Are all of them political?

**canadian gardener** · 05-08-2006, 12:18 AM

sounds really good Amy, that might be a really good read, thanks. There are some interesting things on the eco horizons, and science is best served by keeping open minds. No matter how wonderful a theory is, there are better ones down the line if we keep an open mind, and I tend to think we haven't even begun to understand what drives the weather.

I keep thinking that Greenland was named that because when the Vikings landed and colonized it, they were at the peak of a 500 year warming cycle.

The lost colony was lost 200 years later, when the ice came back with a vengeance. All written records ceased.

But that warming cycle had grape vines in Newfoundland, and other oddities. Things we find incomprehensible as far as weather we "know" to be "normal" today.

And they didn't have internal combustion engines going back then. Volcanic eruptions affect weather, Krakatoa blew and if I don't miss my dates, that is tied into a mini cooling event that happened and is recorded as the year with no summer and famines in various places happened.

We certainly shouldn't be pumping so much CO2 into the air as we do, and other pollutants, but I kind of feel like the victim of a science shell game here when I'm being pushed to accept a theory with holes in it large enough to drive trucks thru (fueled by oil).