http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/michael-crichtons-state-of-confusion/
Real Climate breaks apart Critchon's arguments from the book, providing counter-evidence to Michael Crichton's evidence in the book against global warming. They first comment on the slight ridiculousness of the plot and the characters, especially everyone's favorite badass, Kenner. Being a Crichton fangirl, I was blinded to the ludicrousness of Kenner, whom they describe as "a MIT academic-turned-undercover operative who clearly runs intellectual rings around other characters." This is totally and completely true. It's funny that Kenner is an academic badass. I guess Crichton is trying to make academics cool.
The article goes on about the CO2 evidence from 1940-1970, where the average temperatures in North America actually cooled during that period, thus making the argument that how do we know if CO2 is the cause for the current global warming? Their answer was other forcings such as land use, solar irradiance, etc. They next challenge Crichton's definition of global warming. RealClimate contends that global warming is "defined by the global mean surface temperature." In State of Fear Crichton talks about local cooling as support for the non-existence of global warming, but RealClimate insists that local cooling doesn't contradict global warming. RealClimate also points out some selective bias on Crichton's part. They also tear apart some of his points in his author's message, especially the one about estimates. They also mentioned how Crichton met with the person reviewing the book and a few of his colleagues.
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That's one of the things that bothered me the most about this book - they assumed that since it's called global warming, the effect must be uniform everywhere. Such a simple answer from those that claim to be taking every tiny little factor into account. It's true that there are some places that are cooling, which is why global warming was renamed "climate change."
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that bothered me was their analysis of the makeup of the air. Sure, carbon dioxide just makes up a sliver, but even twice of that sliver would probably be bad, right? Carbon dioxide doesn't have to make up 20% of the atmosphere to have an effect.