Stranger Than Fiction

By Bill McKibben

May/June 2005 Issue

MICHAEL CRICHTON’S NOVEL State of Fear, published last December, is a curious volume, combining all the clichés of pulp fiction (heaving breasts, cannibals, poisoning by octopi) with graphs and comment and lengthy footnotes directing readers to journals like Nature and The Lancet, along with the same small set of studies the climate skeptics have been promoting for years. Its premise is that environmentalists have made up a lie about the dangers of climate change in order to raise funds, and that to keep the lie alive they will do almost anything—notably, try to trigger a tsunami that will make people worry about rising sea levels. The latter is a laughable proposition—tsunamis, caused by volcanic explosions or tectonic shifts, are one of the few natural phenomena still unaffected by man, and no one has ever claimed otherwise.