The Novel That Debunks the Anthropogenic Global Warming Myth

Last night, I finished Michael Crichton's State of Fear, which I mentioned in this post — Cool Summer Reading.

Publishers Weekly dismissed the book as "half anti-global warming screed and half adventure yarn." Yet it was the screed that interested me and the yarn that made me yawn. I've never read a novel before with footnotes to peer-reviewed articles from scientific journals. The author spent years researching the novel and makes a convincing case.

The plot, however, has as many holes as the hypothesis it aims to discredit. It has been years since I read a bestseller, and I forgot how uninspiring the writing can be. That said, it was easy and somewhat entertaining, like an action movie, although it required a great deal of willing suspension of disbelief. The dialogue was not as stlited and clichéd as, say, Stephen King, but, the characters were as weakly drawn and as utterly unconvincing. My advice: read the screed and skim the story.