Hack me some global warming

I think of all the hack writers out there that America seems to love so much, Michael Crichton is my personal favorite. I say “hack writer” with all due respect. If you’ve read any of his books, you know that Crichton is a very intelligent, very well informed and very well researched man. And like the other hacks out there, Crichton simply uses the vehicle of fiction to present new and burgeoning ideas to the public in a way that is more palatable than a science book or lecture. Dan Brown uses the medium to present cult and religious ideas. Vince Flynn uses the medium to present the uncomfortable truth about the CIA and Black Ops. From a purely storytelling point of view, none of these guys are especially good writers. In fact if their stories didn’t incorporate some element of real life intrigue, nobody would even buy their books. Case in point: The DaVinci Code. This wasn’t a popular book because of its gripping narrative. It was popular because people were so intrigued by the new and scandalous ideas he was presenting… so much so that a lot of the public used nothing more than this work of fiction as the basis for arguing that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married.

But as I said, out of all the hacks and bad storytellers, Crichton is my favorite. Yes, like those other hacks, I read his books more to learn about new ideas in a palatable way. The actual story is something I find myself slogging through as a necessary evil in order to glean the actual information he’s trying to present (the glaring exception to this rule being Jurassic Park, which ruled in every way possible. Even still, he does a better job than those other guys. First of all, there’s rarely a moment of dialogue that sounds contrived. The people speak like normal people, even when they are talking for multiple paragraphs about this scientific study or that misunderstood concept. His characters actually have a bit of depth to them. Even his villains have motivations for what they’re doing and aren’t mere stock characters who are just intrinsically evil. But most of all, I appreciate the fact that Crichton doesn’t feel the need to put in an obligatory but incredibly misplaced and often gratuitous sex scene – something those other hacks do with such uncomfortable, almost squeamish incompetence that you wonder if they’ve ever actually had sex before.

Anyway, that whole lead-up was to say that I just read another Michael Crichton book: State of Fear. This one is Crichton’s chance to express his thoughts on global warming. Like most of his other books, I found myself slogging through all the actual plot and story just to get to the parts where the characters would engage in debates about the science Crichton was presenting. And it doesn’t take you long to realize that Crichton really thinks the whole global warming movement is a bunch of crap. Pretty much every argument a global warming acolyte would throw out there as evidence, Crichton’s characters deftly smack down… with actual references and graphs, complete with footnotes to back it all up. By the time I got to the end of the book, I realized I didn’t actually need to read it. Pretty much all the points made in State of Fear were presented much more succinctly (without petty things like storytelling to get in the way) in a speech I’d read on Crichton’s website.

The basic gist is this: there is absolutely no consistent data indicating that global warming is actually happening. I could summarize several points here, but honestly, the tiny little bit of data I could regurgitate could just as easily be rebutted with rhetoric. Better that you go to his site, click on the speeches page and find the global warming speech yourself. It’s a long read (though certainly not the 500 pages of State of Fear) but it’s quite illuminating and Crichton backs up a lot of what he says with not only science but lessons from history. Besides, I’ve already presented a boatload of my own thoughts on global warming here and here.

One of the things that was in the book that you won’t find in the speech is a rant by an eccentric college professor about the politics of fear in this country – from where the book draws its name. Basically he says that if you look at the American media, the use of words like “catastrophe, crisis, disaster, dire, dreaded, unprecedented” has increased one thousand percent since 1985. In 1985 “catastrophe” was said on the news about as often as the word “budget.” But then the Cold War ended. The big fear of Russia and mutually assured destruction had been lifted, so there was nothing for those in power to use in order to keep the people afraid and in line. So they started making things up to be afraid of. DDT, food additives, foreign diseases, breast implants all became cause for alarm, even though the science was incomplete, and would later even prove to be false. According to this character, global warming is just the next in a long line of things designed to rally the public behind the easiest motivator of all: fear. And in ten years when the science finally catches up to everyone, it will be pushed to the side in favor of something else designed to scare the bejeezus out of us. But in the meantime, how much money will we waste on “solutions” that have no scientific viability; money that could have been used to feed god knows how many people.

Okay, I’m ranting. As I said, I’ve written my own thoughts on global warming before. Bottom line, check out Michael Crichton. His book. His speeches. It’s all good and will make you (gasp) think. He may be a hack, but he's very good at it.

Shooting little people RULES!

Damn I'm whooped. The fam and I just got back from a place in Pennsylvania called Peddler's Village. It's a very toursity place to go and buy lots of crap that you don't really need. Fortunately we didn't go for that reason. They also have a mini-amusement place there for kids called Giggleberry Fair which consists of a merry-go-round, a playroom full of dress up clothes, musical instruments, puppets, etc... But the coup de gras at this place is "Giggleberry Mountain" which is a GIGANTIC contraption made of nets, ropes, tubes, slides, and anything else you can imagine a kid might want to climb. It goes up for six stories!

Lauren and I took turns following Allison up and down this monster obstacle course. I've gotta say this about my kid: that girl is STRONG. She's climbing from level to level like it's nothing, often using nothing more than arm strength to hoist herself up. Because the place was built with little people in mind, it seemed to be harder on the adults than the kids and Allison was often having to wait up for US.

BUT, the best damn thing about this whole place, the thing that makes ME want to go back again and again: on the bottom two levels of Giggleberry Mountain are a series of air canons for firing little NERF-like balls, of which there are literally hundreds scattered here, there and everywhere. On the lower level there are canons that fire large volumes of balls up into the air and on the second level are swivel cannons that you use to fire at opponents on the other side of the well. Or you can do what I did and fire down into the well... into the crowd.

The best part is firing on those kids who have just walked in and don't quite realize what the room is all about. Out of nowhere a little ball suddenly plunks them in the head. They look up like, "What the fuck was that?" When they shrug their shoulders and look away, you blast them again. Seriously, how awesome is that? Where else in America can you go where it's actually okay, and even ENCOURAGED, that you shoot little kids in the head? Nowhere, that's where!

And I just want to say that I think I earned the title of "Funnest Grownup on the Muthafuckin Planet" tonight. Most parents were only shooting at their own kids. Well, my kid was off with her mother climbing nets. So I just started unloading on anyone who was at least six-years-old and within the lateral range of my cannon. At first they'd be like, "Holy crap, was that an adult who just shot me?" But after the second or third direct hit, they smartened up and started returning fire. By the time we finally moseyed on out of this place, I had a good twenty kids all ganging up to blast me with cannons or, when that failed, flinging them like baseballs and cheering like Mardi Gras whenever they pegged me in the face. No kidding, almost every single kid in that well was ignoring every other person at every other cannon and focusing all their firepower on me. It was like being on American Gladiators where I was the Gladiator.

It... was... AWESOME!

An Inconvenient Prize?

Can somebody please tell me why Al Gore won the Nobel PEACE Prize? Forgive me for my ignorance, but I always thought that prize went to somebody who, ya know, worked to bring PEACE to the world or to an area that has not known peace.

Recent winners have included a guy who tried to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes, a guy who formed a bank to provide loans to people in extremely impoverished areas and a woman who stood up against political oppression in Kenya. Now, regardless of what you think about global warming, how exactly does raising awareness about the issue equate to bringing peace to the planet? I'm honestly stymied.