20.1 Books 195 MH 13/1/05 4:48 Pm Page 198

20.1 books 195 MH 13/1/05 4:48 pm Page 198

books and arts

A novel view of global warming State of Fear by Michael Crichton HarperCollins: 2004. 603 pp. $27.95, £17.99 Myles Allen Jo Public is smarter than we think. When I reviewed the film The Day After Tomorrow for Nature (429, 347–348), I said that it couldn’t really do any harm, and it made geophysics look cool, so we shouldn’t worry about the liberties it took with thermo- dynamics. I was wrong. Surveys of public opinion conducted before and after the film was released found that it made people think climate change is less likely: “If that’s what it’s all about, there’s no way…” Michael Crichton’s latest blockbuster, State of Fear, is also on the theme of global warming and is, in its own way, equally likely to mislead the unwary. Cold comfort: Argentina’s Perito Moreno glacier is still advancing, but many others are in retreat. A long plane journey to the 10th Confer- ence of the Parties of the United Nations Given the thousands of temperature records the Microwave Sounding Unit.But Crichton Framework Convention on Climate Change available on the Internet, it is unsurprising is strangely silent on this one, presumably was the perfect excuse to read this book. that he can find some to support the claim because the results were not to his liking. “So,”Crichton’s hero (an MIT professor who that much of the apparent warming during Books such as State of Fear highlight the moonlights as a secret-service agent) would the twentieth century is due to urbanization. question of whether there is any such thing as G. GALLARDO-TELAM/AP interrupt to declare,“he’s one of them.”The Occasionally there is a straightforward a dispassionate scientific review. Is it just a central thesis of the book is that we scientists error, such as the claim that the scientific matter of political taste whether to believe are collaborating with the environmental community cannot explain why tempera- Crichton and Lomborg over, say, the Inter- movement, bending facts in a cavalier man- tures rose early in the twentieth century,flat- governmental Panel on Climate Change ner to fit our mad global-warming theories tened off and then rose again, while carbon (IPCC)? If the scientific community is to — and when the facts won’t bend far enough, dioxide levels were rising all the time — the recover its standing in the world, we have to we make them up. explanation, a combination of natural and stand up to the pseudo-democratic vogue for It is a sad indictment of the image of other anthropogenic drivers, has been avail- treating everyone, regardless of expertise, as modern science that many readers will find able for years. And Crichton cannot resist just another stakeholder. No science is infal- this thesis entirely plausible, even if they bringing in a tsunami (presumably a pre- lible, but there is good science and there is don’t buy the specific scenario of eco- condition of the movie deal), although even bad science, and it is not just a matter of terrorists setting off a train of synthetic nat- he must know that no one has ever claimed opinion which is which. A hallmark of good ural disasters to provide mood music for an a link between tsunamis and climate change. science must be the way it treats uncertainty. international climate conference. Crichton Although this is a work of fiction, Crichton’s The IPCC said in 2001 that there is up to himself clearly accepts it, and desperately use of footnotes and appendices is clearly a one-in-three chance that the warming wants his reader to do the same, to the extent intended to give an impression of scientific observed over the twentieth century might that he keeps freezing the action to provide authority. He appears to have succeeded, as be “entirely natural in origin”. If Crichton lengthy sermons, complete with graphics, the book has already been respectfully cited and Lomborg were equally frank about the about all that is wrong with the evidence for in the US Senate as a serious contribution chances of their basic premises turning out global warming. The ruse that Crichton uses to the climate-change debate. to be wrong, their scientific views would be to bring in these sermons is neat: a team of Crichton does make some nice observa- a lot more credible. worried environmental lawyers, preparing tions, for example about the outdoor gear But in the end, State of Fear is about peo- a case against the US government, rehearse worn to climate conferences by people who ple: the transformation of Peter Evans, a possible arguments that might be used by never stray from a computer (let’s face it, lawyer who drives a clean ‘hybrid’ car and is the defence. we’re badly paid office workers). With his too shy to admit he has never fired a gun,into Crichton has evidently been inspired by medical background, he also finds the lack a gun-toting carbon-junkie at the wheel of a the eco-conspiracy theories of Bjørn Lom- of double-blind studies in climate research fuel-hungry sports utility vehicle.It definitely borg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist.Both troubling. Here he has a point, but the solu- helps him get the girls. “There was some- books demonstrate how intelligent review- tion is far from obvious, given that we are all thing about him. Some surprising quality ers, given a complex issue and sufficiently studying a single patient, and we learn in the shehadn’t noticed before.”He had become… rich literature,can find support for whatever first term of graduate school how the patient a climate sceptic. position they care to adopt. For example, is believed to have behaved over the past cen- That pretty much says it all about this Crichton opens with the fact that glaciers are tury. Having contentious results re-analysed book:Viagra for climate sceptics. ■ advancing in Iceland and Norway, failing to by independent groups is an excellent idea; Myles Allen is in the Climate Dynamics Group, mention that they are retreating just about the US National Science Foundation, to its Department of Physics, University of Oxford, everywhere else outside the polar ice caps. credit,recently did just this with results from Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK.