State of Fear by Michael Crichton

I re-read this book recently, it is a work of fiction which introduces the premise / theory that the environmental lobby is just another method by the establishment to keep us in a perpetual state of fear, following on from the cold war came global warming. This state of fear creates spending and political power but the book using scientific references to support the fictional plot suggests that global warming is at best inconclusive and suggests that we are yet to learn so much about are environment that any theory about global warming is little more than a guess.

However as the character in the book suggests just because you don't agree with global warming doesn't mean that you don't want pollution controls and CO2 reduction. I have to say Michael Crichton creates a compelling argument. One of the best simple comparisons is that despite all the investment and technology we cannot accurately predict the weather beyond 5-10 days so how can we consider a prediction for a 100 years hence to be accurate.

There are loads of other rational arguments in the book but with the alternative view I find it difficult to believe that global warming is a global conspiracy. I suppose one of the problems is that until it happens we wont know whether everyone is right or wrong.

The precautionary principle also mentioned in the book means that if there is the slightest change of the catastrophic scenario occurring then we should not take the action that would cause it. Therefore the precautionary principle would suggest that because scientists have found a potential risk we should do everything to eliminate it. However you could use the precautionary principle to say we should live 50 ft underground all the time because every time you go outside there is a risk of a plane falling on your head.

Then I reach the thought in my head that says "Do I believe in global warming?". Then my second thoughts kicks in and realises the framing of the question suggests there is a belief factor rather than relying on cold, hard, undeniable facts and truths.

"Do I believe in doing something to protect the environment?". No facts required this time but how do you protect an environment, again it raises in the book that you can only manage an environment and we still don't know how to manage land to protect something. The ecosystems around us are ever changing we cant protect and preserve but we can manage it in a direction. In the books it talks about nature not having a balance but oscillating between different factors as species rise and fall.

Finally the book finishes with the premise that they should set up a new environmental group which basically looks for problems and fixes it, so take land management, you accept you do not know how to do it, so you take 8 similar parcels of land, have a different management policy in each one. Try things out get them evaluated by outside consultants and by trial and error find out what land management policies work and don't work.

One character talks about scientific journal authors talking about simulations as if they were real world data and suggest that such articles should be labelled "Warning: Computer Simulation - May be erroneous and unverifiable" and then suggests a label for newspaper articles as well "Warning speculation - may be fact free".

I have long argued about labels for news articles, some kind of evaluation of the source:

How about this the Zephryist- Morton coding
(the highest number would be taken in each code)

8 - Video evidence
7 - Sound evidence
6 - Multiple eye witness accounts
5 - conflicting eye witness accounts with some commonality
4 - Single eye witness account
3 - written evidence
2 - Multiple eye witness conflicting accounts
1 - 2nd hand source no eye witness accounts
0 - opinion only no verifiable witness 1 or second hand

4 - Known as giving previously reliable evidence
3 - No previous record of evidence
2 - Questionable record of giving reliable evidence
1 - interpretation of known facts with own opinion on conclusions or extrapolation
0 - own opinion - few known facts with open interpretation.

3 - Expert / professional in field
2 - Media expert in field
1 - Amateur in field
0 - Unknown knowledge status in field.

So with this you could evaluate any news source such as the BBC news website which would be a 8 by 4 by 2 site, one of the highest rating with video evidence, known to give reliable evidence in the past, and with media experts.

You could also rate a blog, my highest rating would be a 4 by 4 by 1 unless you felt I was merely giving opinion where my blog would be rated 4 by 1 by 1. Of course with a fully functioning system the ratings would be given by peers.

The beauty of the system is that the lower the number the more questionable the source, it would help any reader instantly be able to separate fact from fiction without having to read pages of previous articles and compare them with other sources to determine the reliability, with a peer reviewed system other people have already done the leg work.

You could go further and break down the rating system more by breaking each section into a series of questions almost an acid test of reliability.

I may return to this some day or like many other posts on my blog it may just be a random thought that sits on the shelf collecting dust.