Ahead of his time: Michael Crichton on the global warming fraud

"F---ing pissed!" And that was one of the more polite e-mails that have come in since Friday afternoon when this blog and many others spread the news about the Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia getting hacked. That 61-megabyte .zip archive has gone viral across the Intertubes and bunches of blood-boiling stuff is still being gleaned from the correspondence between climate "scientists" that points to a decades-long conspiracy to promote paranoia about global warming at cost of rigorous and honest study.

Well, many people have been saying for a long time that global warming is fake. And few argued against global warming as articulately and passionately as did Michael Crichton. The acclaimed bestselling author of Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain addressed global warming in his novel State of Fear. It was one year ago this month that Crichton passed away, but I've no doubt that he would have been very pleased with this weekend's news... and would probably smile from knowing he was so far ahead of the curve. If you're interested in some serious discussion about the Earth and its climate, I greatly recommend reading Crichton's 2005 lecture "Complexity Theory and Environmental Management". It's a rather long read, but one rife with all sorts of solid information (the thing about Chernobyl severely made my jaw drop).

And I'm gonna do something that I've never done before: if you maintain a blog, SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE HACKING OF THE CRU! I'm seeing the traditional press start to finally disseminate this news, but they're (perhaps understandably but that's still no excuse) being awfully slow-pokish about it. This very well might be the biggest scam in modern history, when you consider all the money that's been wasted and legislation that's been enforced in the name of "global warming". Should that make everyone "f---ing pissed"?!? Yer #&@%ed right it should!!

If sincere investigation bears out that this has been a fraud, then careers must be forever destroyed and I'll even suggest that a lot of climate con-artists need to be strung up from the nearest telephone poles by their circular reproductive units. With piano wire.

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Michael Crichton, author of JURASSIC PARK and a ton of other awesome novels, has passed away

The first time I ever read a Michael Crichton novel, it was Jurassic Park. I bought the paperback version the week it came out, one cold and rainy Friday afternoon following swim practice at our high school. It drizzled hard all weekend and I spent most of it curled up under a blanket in my bedroom, reading Crichton's fascinating tale of outlaw cloning and systems breakdown.

I wound up re-reading Jurassic Park five more times after that, prior to the movie coming out a year and a half later. By that time I had also read many other of Crichton's novels, including The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, and Congo (which for some reason I enjoyed even more than Jurassic Park).

Over the years I hungrily devoured most of his books as they were released. The Lost World, I eagerly snapped up during my first semester at Elon (and I've always thought that both volumes of Crichton's "Dinosaur Duology" were far better than the movies they spawned). More recently I've enjoyed Timeline and State of Fear, and two years ago I both thrilled and laughed at reading Next, his most recent novel.

I had come to relish the thought of a pending Michael Crichton novel: some bold work of fiction that in addition to entertaining, it would have me thinking about some new concept... or old concepts in entirely new ways. That was part of Crichton's gift to not only literature, but the general public's appreciation of science and technology. Not to mention compelling his readers to wrestle with the same ethical questions that happen every day in the realms of research and commerce. Crichton was a much-needed cipher, who helped us come to terms with the world that we were, more often than not, wrecklessly building.

And unfortunately, his will no longer be that voice of caution that we would have been wise to heed.

Word broke a short while ago that Michael Crichton has passed away at age 66, following a private battle with cancer.

In addition to his novels, Crichton was also a medical doctor who received his degree from Harvard. He was a university instructor and wrote much nonfiction about medicine and travel. And Crichton created the hit television series ER, now in its final season.

He will be sorely missed, by his family and friends and his many legions of fans.

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