Michael Crichton says Global Warming doesn't exist!

I haven't been keeping up with the recent works of popular thriller author Michael Crichton, but when I saw his new book, State of Fear, mentioned on this entry of Hideo Kojima(creator of the Metal Gear series of games)'s blog, I knew I had to find out more about it. I gathered from aforementioned blog entry that Mr Crichton's taken it upon himself to *ahem* debunk the Global Warming theory. Mr Kojima, who I respect greatly as a games designer, appears to have bought Crichton's view- hook, line and sinker.

Personally, I find the whole anti-Global Warming faction to be dubious, especially given that several of the scientists and "scientific" organisations in said faction are sponsored by- you guessed it!- the oil industry. Whoop-dee-doo! No surprise then that most anti-Global Warming sentiment comes from the USA!

Anyway, after reading Mr. Kojima's blog entry I delved deep into the web and found a rather good site that takes a long, hard look at the book in question and finds it, unsurprisingly to me, to be of questionable scientific merit. The site in question is RealClimate and here is the article which analyses the book. The site itself is run by working climate scientists and, to my layman's eye, appears to give a well-balanced, scientific view on matters regarding climate change. So here's the score as I see it:
Climate Scientists- 1. Michael Crichton- 0.

So even if the man is wrong, why am I so hard on Mr Crichton? I mean, he just wrote a novel right? Who's gonna take him seriously?
Two things: First off, if Global Warming, like Mr Crichton claims, isn't real, then that's just swell- we're in no trouble at all. But if it IS real- and there's a heckuva lot of evidence to suggest that it is- then it's amazingly irresponsible to dismiss the theory offhand and just pretend like we- and by we I mean the collective global community, or EVERYONE- don't need to do anything at all to stop this situation from getting any worse. I think this is a clear case where erring on the side of caution is not a bad thing at all. That Mr Crichton doesn't see things this way is just bizarre, to say the least.

Secondly, Mr Crichton isn't just putting this pseudo-science (like all the science in all his books, actually!) in his book for kicks, he actually seems to think that he, a layman, is qualified to TELL OTHER PEOPLE what to believe with regards to climate change and the Global Warming theory. And people will believe him because there are LOADS of people out there who will believe a man like Mr Crichton because he can use big words and he's somewhat of a celebrity. So since the release of the book in late 2004, he's been going around giving speeches, including one in front of the United States Senate (whatever happened to getting ACTUAL SCIENTISTS to give speeches to government officials about stuff like this?) Using your celebrity status to put forth a view as dangerous as his (the danger is that other people will actually start believing it) is amazingly irresponsible.

But all's not lost! Despite the fact that kooks like Mr Crichton persist in denying the existence and impact of Global Warming, the US government has shifted their official stance on Global Warming from one that downplays it's significance to one that acknowledges that it IS indeed a problem that needs to be fixed. Though the USA still won't ratify the Kyoto Protocol (partly due to political reasons *cough*India*cough*China*cough*), they signed another agreement in 2005, the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, in which 6 countries (China, India, USA, Australia, Japan and South Korea) agreed to collaborate on the development of technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is a 'softer' treaty than the Kyoto Protocol in that it does not require any of the countries to limit their emissions by a set amount, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.