Global Warming : Fear Psychosis or Real Threat

Excerpts from State of Fear by Michael Crichton.

Let's remember where we live. We live on the third planet from a medium-size sun. Our planet is five billion years old, and it has been changing constantly all during that time. The Earth is now on its third atmosphere.

The first atmosphere was helium and hydrogen. It dissipated early on, because the planet was so hot. Then, as the planet cooled, volcanic eruptions produced a second atmosphere of steam and carbon-dioxide. Later the water vapor condensed, forming the oceans that cover most of the planet. Then, around three billion years ago, some bacteria evolved to consume carbon-dioxide and excrete a highly toxic gas, oxygen. Other bacteria released nitrogen. The atmospheric concentration of these gases slowly increased. Organisms that could not adapt died out.

Meanwhile the planet's land masses, floating on huge tectonic plates, eventually came together in a configuration that interfered with the circulation of ocean currents. It began to get cold for the first time. The first ice appeared two billion years ago.

And for the last seven hundred thousand years, our planet has been in a geological ice age, characterized by advancing and retreating glacial ice. No one is entirely sure why, but ice now covers the planet every hundred thousand years, with smaller advances every twenty thousand or so. The last advance was twenty thousand years ago, so weÂ’re due for the next one.

And even today, after five billion years, our planet remains amazingly active. We have five hundred volcanoes, and an eruption every two weeks. Earthquakes are continuous: a million and a half each year, a moderate Richter 5 quake every six hours, a big earthquake every ten days. Tsunamis race across the Pacific Ocean every three months.

Our atmosphere is as violent as the land beneath it. At any moment there are one thousand five hundred electrical storms across the planet. Eleven lightning bolts strike the ground each second. A tornado tears across the surface every six hours. And every four days, a giant cyclonic storm, hundreds of miles in diameter, spins over the ocean and wreaks havoc on the land.

The nasty little apes that call themselves human beings can do nothing except run and hide. For these same apes to imagine they can stabilize this atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. They can't control the climate.

The truth is, they run from the storms.

Oh no, I am not an oil or automobile industry stooge. Believe me, I was not bribed to publish the above excerpt by any of the big corporations (I am not closed to that option though). Its just that I can see pure logic and rationale as distinct from rhetoric. I do not belong to any side. In fact I have had the opportunity to be on both sides of the fence and I didn't see the grass greener on any particular side. I am referring to my work on the Kyoto Protocol here. For a longtime, I was a strong believer in the mitigation effects of the Kyoto Protocol. And, probably, still am. How can one give up on an idea that one thinks he originally came up with, the carbon credits exchange. It might sound self-congratulatory, or in the least, "I told you so" attitude. But yes, I do believe that I came up with the carbon credits exchange before those guys in IPCC did. I still remember the well meaning girls in my school who were baying for my blood when I told them that the rich could actually buy polluting rights from a stock exchange and thus pay for the more ecologically sound ventures. Never underestimate the power of free market incentives to be environmentally responsible, I tried to tell them. But they favored legislation and bans and leered at my contract with the Devil himself.

To get the things back on track, do you believe in global warming? And if so, is it a belief rooted in "everybody thinks so" or do you have some real evidence. Mind you, when you say global warming, you imply that the whole of the globe is warming up. Do you have irrefutable evidence for that?

And if we take it for granted that the globe is, in fact, warming up, is it because of us, the human intervention? Can this be proved either way?

If we can shoot a rocket into the space and determine its trajectory as accurately as a few meters, why can't we predict the weather on this Earth a week hence?

How morally justified is it for the developed world to tell us in the third-world not to pollute? Doesn't it preserve the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the developing world?

Can we afford to live in a State of Fear of what will happen hundred years hence when the biggest problems of our times, poverty, terrorism, religious orthodoxy, hard borders, etc. stare us right into the face?

Can we?