Green Group discussion

Michael Crichton's novel is a 2004 techno-thriller concerning eco-terrorists who attempt mass murder to support their views, published in France in 2006.

State of Fear is, like many of Crichton's works, a fictional work that uses science and speculation for the storyline. The book contains many graphs and footnotes, and a twenty page bibliography.The debate over global warming serves as the backdrop for the book. Crichton supplies a personal afterword and two appendices that link the fictional part of the book with real examples of his thesis.

For sure, this novel will create some debate about global warming during our Spring book club. Hope everyone enjoys it !

Well, ma'am I don't see any comments so far. I skimmed through this book a year or so ago -- it made me cranky. I then fell back on the objective and science-based material at realclimate.org to judge Crichton's climate scientific fallacies.

Although Crichton's thriller skills are adequate (Andromeda Strain scared me good when I was in grade school), his attempt to write a thriller that also debunks the science of climate change fails. However, it has been all too influential among those who _want_ to disbelieve.

My summary: one of the most anti-green books of the last decade.

Thanks for your post and your interest for State of Fear by Michael Crichton. The discussion about this book will start on May, 1, 2010 as you can read it at The Green group Homepage. This is one of the upcoming reading of our Spring Book Club.

The premise of Michael Crichton novel, State of Fear, is that environmentalists are trying to cause anxiety in the minds of mankind in regards to global warming. He uses lots of scientific data in forms of graphs and numbers to show that we are just going through natural chronological climate changes with regards to global warming. I think Michelle is right in saying that this novel should stir up a lot of debate for the Spring book club.
As for a thriller novel, Crichton does have a lot of action throughout the book. To top it off, the bad guys are the environmentalists. There are numerous sub plots and many characters to follow. I must admit that I did get confused in parts and had to go back and reread section to keep things straight. But the ending brought it all together and the sub and wave machines finally made sense.
With all the characters and data filling over 600 pages it was hard to keep on reading. I must admit, there were times when I wanted to put the book down and not pick it up again. But I’ve always admired Crichton’s works, so I felt I owed it to him to finish this novel. But as an environmentalist concerned about global warming and the author of the thriller, Green Power, this novel did create a state of anger for me.

I just finished the audiobook today, which is great. Of course the premise is more annoying than anything because those less educated on the subject of global climate change will likely be persuaded by the book. That said, I really enjoyed the book overall... lots of action, but fairly predictable, and it made my commute easier for 3 weeks!

So did he succesfully discredit the entire scientific basis for climate change? Have the data since the book was published (2004) tipped the issue far enough that his position has weakened?