from Harvard Law School in two years, rather than the customary three. He has earned a doctorate from Caltech at 20 and then a J.D. Richard Kenner is a 39-year-old man-for-all-seasons on leave from a tenured professorship at MIT. But the novelist enjoys more license than the scientist or policy analyst!Ĭrichton's perspective is presented in Socratic fashion in the novel by a few key characters.

On the other hand, who in their right mind would accept that a tsunami could have anything to do with climate change? Did the recent tsunami-induced disaster in South Asia contribute in any meaningful way to the public discourse on the threat of human-induced climate change? We doubt it. What better way to promote a state of fear and increase donations? The tsunami would be timed to cause a wall of water up to 60 feet high to crash on the California coast just when the world's media are assembled at the conference to hear the experts expound on the dangers of sudden climate change. The plot involves engineering a series of climate disasters, including a tsunami induced by triggering a landslide on a deep trench in the Pacific Ocean. In brief, NERF has organized a conference to promote public awareness of the threat of sudden climate change. It is more difficult to react when his philosophy is communicated by fictional characters committed to saving the world from a surreal terrorist plot hatched by a shady environmental organization known as the National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF). It would be relatively easy to respond to Crichton if his views were expressed in a traditional science or policy forum. Worried about the population explosion? Relax: 'The people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today.' You get the idea. The ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) implicated in reducing the effectiveness of the Earth's protective ozone layer 'harmed Third World people by eliminating cheap refrigerants so that their food spoiled more often and more of them died of food poisoning.' The ban on DDT was 'arguably the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century.Since the ban, two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children.' He also takes shots at those who would promote protection of giant sequoias: concerns about loss of global biodiversity, he posits, are ill informed. The book targets particularly those who believe that global warming poses a threat that should be taken seriously. Michael Crichton's State of Fear is less a novel than a forum for the author to rail against what he perceives as environmental extremism.

Michael crichton global warming