Russ Steele
State of Fear was one of my favorite fiction reads, but Michael Crichton became a hero for me the day he faced down a Senate Panel on Climate Change and demanded that scientist and policy makers apply the same criteria for making climate science policy as the government demands for approving medical procedures and drugs. Both medicine and climate change policy have a significant impact on our lives and we deserve the best that climate science can offer.
I loved this quote from State of Fear:
"The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance. We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.”
Thanks to Jennifer Marohassy for reminding me how applicable it is today.
