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Jewish World Review March 30, 2005 / 19 Adar II, 5765 The fear Crichton's latest questions makes scare-peddlers frightened By John Stossel
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Michael Crichton's scary movies, like "Jurassic Park," have made
billions. He has sold 100 million copies of his scary books. And now he's
telling us: Don't be scared.
He almost didn't write his latest book, "State of Fear." (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
"I'm 62 years old," he told me. "I've had a good life. I'm happy. I'm enjoying
myself. I don't need any of the flak that would come from doing a book like
this."
Flak is coming because the fear Crichton is questioning is fear
of global warming. And as Crichton told me, "people's feelings about the
environment are very close to religion."
Global warming, of course, is not a faith that brings comfort.
We interviewed people who seemed almost hysterical about it. One said,
"Greenland is melting!" Another warned that "places like Los Angeles and New
York will be underwater!" One person went even further off — should I say
it? — the deep end: "I'm thinking it's like the end of the world."
It's natural for people to worry because there's been so much
media hype. A U.S. News & World Report cover story claimed that within 50
years, the ocean "could" be checking in at the glamorous hotels of South
Beach, Fla., while Vermonters "could" get malaria and Nebraska farms "could"
be abandoned because of drought.
Crichton himself used to worry about global warming. But then he
spent three years researching it. He concluded it's just another foolish
media-hyped scare. Many climate scientists agree with him, saying the effect
of man and greenhouse gases is minor.
Many people believe the weather is already getting worse — that
the earth is experiencing bigger storms than ever before. That U.S. News &
World Report cover screamed "Scary Weather." But it's not true that there
are more storms today or that weather is "scarier" than it used to be. As
Crichton says, "It's something that almost nobody actually goes and checks."
Sadly, he's right. When "scare stories" fit reporters'
preconceptions, we rarely check with the skeptics. On the subject of global
warming, reporters often listen to alarmists and don't take the trouble to
survey the scientists who really know. And even if they do, it's a mere fig
leaf of fairness. U.S. News, for example, buried its one skeptical voice
under a shrieking headline, after paragraphs predicting disaster, and
between two quotes from alarmists — astoundingly presented as voices of
reason — dismissing dissenters.
Crichton got his medical training at Harvard, where he paid his
way through college by writing thrillers. When he wrote "The Andromeda
Strain," the story of an organism from outer space that threatens to wipe
out mankind, Hollywood called, and his medical career was over. He's gone on
to write book after book that anticipated the future. "Jurassic Park"
introduced cloning before others really talked about it. "Disclosure," about
a man who's sexually harassed by a female boss, also raised issues that were
ahead of their time. "State of Fear" may be his biggest risk, because he's
taken on environmental groups that some Americans revere with religious
fervor. Crichton says, "Environmental organizations are fomenting false
fears in order to promote agendas and raise money." He points out that the
even the scientists who study global warming have an incentive to exaggerate
the problem. If you say, "there isn't a big problem," you're less likely to
get grant money.
"State of Fear" is already being attacked, he says, by activists
who didn't even read his book. "We seem to be very ready to think it's all
coming to an end," Crichton says. And there are consequences to that kind of
thinking. It can be quite difficult to oppose new laws, however much freedom
and money they will take away from you, when you believe they are the only
thing that can stop major cities from being lost to a sea swollen by melting
icecaps. But we're not on the way to disaster, except in the form of more
laws. "State of Fear" will give you new perspective on "global warming."
Then, when someone tells you "it's like the end of the world!" you can say:
"Give Me a Break."
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© 2005, by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc. |
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