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Originally Posted by Textcritic
I took a chance with that one!
If Stephen King wrote from a scientific background and provided a solid, well researched case for his position, then perhaps they would cancel each other out. Crichton does not claim to be an expert, but he cites a great deal of expert testimony to support his position, which can be summarized as follows:
• It is impossible to predict future climates. We cannot even accurately forecast next week's weather, and a number of scientists and politicians expect us to believe in their climate projections in excess of hundreds of years. Like any other type of complex systems, the condition of the earth's climate cannot be forecasted any more accurately than the stock exchange, mortality rates, and next week's winning lottery numbers.
• It is impossible to excercise control over the biosphere. There are too many variables involved to be accurately assessed in order to exude a form of control.
I am not prepared to take a layman's opinion as gospel, but there is science that makes a compelling case to suggest that there is little reason to believe in an impending environmental catastrophy. Most projections about the earth's future are based upon the patterns of the past, but given the reliability of information and data from 50 years ago; 100 years ago; 200 years ago; 500 years ago; how accurate can we expect our projections to be? In human history, there is no record of a single global catastrophe, and it seems reasonable to me to assume that one (or several) are now suddenly immenant.
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I'm a huge Crichton fan, but he's full of bunk on this one. Just like his take on nanotechnologhy was pop-science crap I think he misses the mark on this one by a huge margin. The scientific community is laughing at him and his approach. One meterologist described his approach of writting an idea on a bar napkin and thinking that it will stand up to the light of scrutiny. Crichton writes entertaining fantasy, with the key on fantasy.