Cool Summer Reading

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we’re asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

Thus spake Michael Crichton, quoted in a book I've just finished (and to which I submitted a chapter) — Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas.

Global warming has been on my mind recently as we are enjoying yet another cool summer in normally unbearably hot and humid Pohang. (Yes, I know. Climate change is the preferred catch-all phrase employed today.)

We bought our first air conditioner three summers ago and have used it about four times, and not once this year, in which don't even need fans. And at the beginning of each summer, I recall being warned by experts to expect the "hottest summer on record."

So, what better page-turner for this cool August than State of Fear, which a friend passed onto me a few years ago and, knowing my reading tastes, said I'd never read?

Publishers Weekly pans the book with these words: "Crichton alters his usual formula--three parts thrills and spills to one part hard science--to a less appetizing concoction that is half anti-global warming screed and half adventure yarn."

David J. Gannon is more positive: "In Crichton's view, the whole global warming argument is false. His view is that environmentalism has degenerated into a quasi religious system devoid of scientific veracity. Thus, the proponents of the global warming hysteria are pushing faith over fact, many of them have lost their moorings and the inevitable result is a grand conspiracy.

Another reviewer said it "reminded [him] very much of Moby Dick with its heavy emphasis on both an adventure story and sharing detailed information.... His appendix I on the dangers of politicized science is something everyone should read. The eugenics example is a chilling one."