Being Set Free From Fear of the Future

As I grow older and wider, I’ve been thinking about trading up to a bigger gas eater in a few months when my lease is up on the Nissan Sentra. The only thing that has been standing in the way of more comfort, frankly, is a touch of guilt.

Thankfully, however, I picked up a copy of Michael Crichton’s new bestselling novel, “State of Fear,” and I’ve been set free.

There is no global warming, it turns out. The whole thing is a scam perpetrated by environmentalists and scientists to justify their own existence and make an easy buck in the process.

Crichton, the writer of “Jurassic Park” and several other books that became Hollywood sensations, offers this contrarian message in two neat packages.

First, there’s the fictional (as far as we know) story of an environmentalist plot to slice off a chunk of ice in Antarctica. This would turn part of California into an underwater park and a good deal of the United States into a rain forest, bolstering the cause of a “politico-legal-media complex” that has created a State of Fear!

Thankfully, a crack government agent is on the job, racing the clock to expose the evil plot. He manages, as New Yorker magazine noted, to get a blond damsel in distress to strip to her skivvies in order to survive an attack of artificial lightning.

Scientists may be laughing, but no one in Hollywood is.

The second part of the package is Crichton’s end-of-the-book pronouncement that global warming projections are nothing but guesswork, and no more useful or accurate than his guess that there’s nothing to worry about. We’re in a natural warming trend, he says, which “began about 1850.”

“We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it,” Crichton says.

This is partly true, as is much of what Crichton says, and his broader view is shared by a tiny minority of scientists. The guy is no dummy, having worked his way through Harvard medical school by writing thrillers. And his points about modern political hyperventilating and exaggeration, and about scientists delivering the results desired by those who fund their research, are valid if not new.

The question is why, on the subject of global warming, we should believe a techno-thriller writer rather than thousands of scientists from around the world, many of whom have devoted years to the study of climate change.

In perusing the body of Crichton’s work, I may have come upon an answer. His interests have sent him traveling beyond straight-ahead science and into the psychic world, with layovers in channeling and exorcism. As a Library Journal review once noted, “He is entirely open to notions spouted by spoon-bending psychics.... “

If Crichton has psychic powers, who am I to say the planet is not getting warmer? If the guy can bend a spoon without touching it -- or even a fork, for that matter -- I might as well run out and buy a Hummer.

Crichton conveniently offers another reason we should believe him, rather than the scientific community.

“Everybody has an agenda,” Crichton says in “State of Fear.” “Except me.”

Curious, then, to see him on ABC’s “20/20” hawking his $27.95 book with the help of slobbering co-anchor John Stossel, who treated Crichton like a god sent back from the future to tell us we don’t have to get in line for a Toyota Prius hybrid.

The danger here, aside from questionable science from a dilettante, is that Crichton sets himself up as a high-profile apologist for reckless indulgence, even as war is being waged on oil-rich land by a country that snubbed an international pact to rein in global warming. With 5% of the world’s population, the United States spits out 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

Given our culture, millions are apt to swallow Crichton’s made-for-Hollywood simplifications of complicated science. That’s why some scientists are stepping up to knock down what they call Crichton’s distortions and red herrings.

“Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion,” reads the title of a response by Gavin Schmidt, a NASA researcher, on RealClimate.org, whose contributors include some of the leading authorities on global warming.

Scientists don’t completely understand warming, Schmidt told me. But he says “State of Fear” and last year’s movie “The Day After Tomorrow” -- which scientists mocked for its ridiculous depiction of rapid and huge climate changes -- are a disservice.

Evidence of warming caused by carbon dioxide can be found in the way ocean temperatures are rising, Schmidt said. “When you have warming at the surface, it means we’re doing something to the climate, pushing it slightly out of balance.”

Trees now grow at higher elevations in the Alps, Rockies and Andes. And there is 15% less ice in the Arctic than there was 40 years ago. Many of these changes, Schmidt said, are accompanied by rising levels of greenhouse gases.

“As you project into the future,” said Schmidt, a climate modeler based in New York City, “all you can see is the situation getting worse.

“You have to be extremely concerned about the fragility of the ecosystem and our ability, say, to grow wheat where we grow wheat, and rice where we grow rice.... We’re tickling an angry beast.”

Schmidt said a friend of his recently testified at a Senate hearing, and Sen. John McCain asked him what he should tell constituents in Arizona.

“My colleague said, ‘It’s like smoking. It’s not going to kill you today, it’s not going to kill you tomorrow. But statistically speaking, it’s not going to do you any good.’ ”

I tried getting hold of Crichton, who lives here in the land of smog and gas-guzzling behemoths.

“He’s actually pretty much done doing interviews” on “State of Fear,” his publicist told me. “He’s kind of moved on to movie stuff and other things.”

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.