2. Reviews and Reactions

State of Fear was number 3 on the New York Times best seller’s list in early January 2005, and

it is generating plenty of controversy. Here are some of the best reviews and commentaries we’ve

seen and recommend:
"A Chilling Tale: A Review of State of Fear by Michael Crichton," by Ron Bailey, Wall Street

Journal, December 10, 2004
"State of Fear Debunks Junk Science About Theories of Global Warming," by George Will,

Washington Post, December 23, 2004 ( nationally syndicated column)
"Michael Crichton and the End of Radical Environmentalism," by Joseph Bast, the Heartland

Institute, January 1, 2005
"Conservatives Should Make Time To Read Michael Crichton's State of Fear," by Myron Ebell,

Competitive Enterprise Institute, December 29, 2004
"Michael Crichton Takes a Novel Approach to Global Warming," by Iain Murray, National Review,

December 21, 2004
"An Update on the Science of Climate Change," by Sen. James M. Inhofe, speech before the

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works citing State of Fear, January 4, 2005
"Review of State of Fear by Michael Crichton," by S. Fred Singer, January 1, 2005
"The Green 'State of Fear,'" by syndicated columnist Suzanne Fields, Washington Times,

February 3, 2005
"State of Fear: Creating Environmental Disasters," by Paul Messino, Carolina Journal, February

2005

3. What Crichton Says about Global Warming

Early in the book, Crichton has one of his characters define global warming as “the heating up of

the earth from burning fossil fuels.” (p. 80) Not so, says another character, who defines global

warming as follows:

... global warming is the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases

are causing an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere because of the

so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’ (p. 81, italics in the original)

The second definition is correct. “Global warming” really is only a theory, not a fact, and the

words Crichton chose to italicize are all key terms in the scientific debate over whether the

theory is correct or not. Over the course of the book, other characters document the following

flaws in the theory of global warming:

most of the warming in the past century occurred before 1940, before CO2 emissions could have

been a major factor (p. 84);

temperatures fell between 1940 and 1970 even as CO2 levels increased (p. 86);

temperature readings from reporting stations outside the U.S. are poorly maintained and staffed

and probably inaccurate; those in the U.S., which are probably more accurate, show little or no

warming trend (pp. 88-89);

“full professors from MIT, Harvard, Columbia, Duke, Virginia, Colorado, UC Berkeley, and other

prestigious schools ... the former president of the National Academy of Sciences ... will argue

that global warming is at best unproven, and at worst pure fantasy" (p. 90);

temperature sensors on satellites report much less warming in the upper atmosphere (which the

theory of global warming predicts should warm first) than is reported by temperature sensors on

the ground (p. 99);

data from weather balloons agree with the satellites (p. 100);

“No one can say for sure if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds,” yet cloud

cover plays a major role in global temperatures (p. 187);

Antarctica “as a whole is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker” (p. 193, sources listed on

p. 194);

The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica has been melting for the past 6,000 years (p. 195, p.

200-201); “Greenland might lose its ice pack in the next thousand years” (p. 363);

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is “a huge group of bureaucrats and

scientists under the thumb of bureaucrats,” and its 1995 report was revised “after the scientists

themselves had gone home” (p. 245-246);

James Hansen’s predictions of global warming during a Congressional committee hearing in 1988,

which launched the global warming scare, were wrong by 200 percent (.35 degrees Celsius over

the next 10 years versus the actual increase of .11 degrees); in 1998, Hansen said long-term

predictions of climate are impossible (pp. 246-247);

there has been no increase in extreme weather events (.e.g., floods, tornadoes, drought) over

the past century or in the past 15 years; computer models used to forecast climate change do

not predict more extreme weather (p. 362, 425-426);

temperature readings taken by terrestrial reporting stations are rising because they are

increasingly surrounded by roads and buildings which hold heat, the “urban heat island” effect (p.

368-369); methods used to control for this effect fail to reduce temperatures enough to offset

it (p. 369-376);

changes in land use and urbanization may contribute more to changes in the average ground

temperature than “global warming” caused by human emissions (p. 383, 388);

temperature data are suspect because they have been adjusted and manipulated by scientists who

expect to find a warming trend (p. 385-386);

carbon dioxide has increased a mere 60 parts per million since 1957, a tiny change in the

composition of the atmosphere (p. 387);

increased levels of CO2 act a fertilizer, promoting plant growth and contributing to the shrinking

of the Sahara desert (p. 421);

the spread of malaria is unaffected by global warming (pp. 421-422, footnotes on 422);

sufficient data exist to measure changes in mass for only 79 of the 160,000 glaciers in the world

(p. 423);

the icecap on Kilimanjaro has been melting since the 1800s, long before human emissions could

have influenced the global climate, and satellites do not detect a warming trend in the region (p.

423); deforestation at the foot of the mountain is the likely explanation for the melting trend (p.

424);

sea levels have been rising at the rate of 10 to 20 centimeters (four to eight inches) per hundred

years for the past 6,000 years (p. 424);

El Niños are global weather patterns unrelated to global warming and on balance tend to be

beneficial by extending growing seasons and reducing the use of heating fuels (p. 426);

the Kyoto Protocol would reduce temperatures by only 0.04 degrees Celsius in the year 2100 (p.

478);

a report by scientists published in Science concludes “there is no known technology capable of

reducing [global] carbon emissions ... totally new and undiscovered technology is required” (p.

479);

change, not stability, is the defining characteristic of the global climate, with naturally occurring

events (e.g., volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis) much more likely to affect climate than

anything humans do (p. 563); and

computer simulations are not real-world data and cannot be relied on to produce reliable forecasts

(p. 566).

One character in State of Fear concludes, “The threat of global warming is essentially

nonexistent. Even if it were a real phenomenon, it would probably result in a net benefit to most

of the world” (p. 407).

4. Crichton Is Right!

All of the points listed above are based on sound research by reputable authors. For

confirmation, you can buy and read any of the following books:

Ronald Bailey (ed.), Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet, 2000, chapter 2

and chapter 7.

Robert C. Balling, Jr., The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality, 1992.

Robert L. Bradley, Jr., Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability, 2000.

Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg, and Freiderick Seitz, Scientific Perspectives on the

Greenhouse Problem, 1990.

Jay H. Lehr (ed.), Standard Handbook of Environmental Science, Health, and Technology, 2000,

chapter 22, section 1.

Jay H. Lehr (ed.), Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns, 1992.

Robert Mendelsohn and James E. Neumann (eds.),The Impact of Climate Change on the United

States Economy, 1999.

Patrick J. Michaels, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists,

Politicians, and the Media, 2004.

Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr., The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global

Warming, 2000.

Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry about Global Warming, 1998.

Kendra Okonski (ed.), Adapt or Die: The Science, Politics and Economics of Climate Change,

2003.

Dixy Lee Ray with Lou Guzzo, Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened to Common Sense?,

1993

S. Fred Singer, Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate, 1997

S. Fred Singer (ed.), Global Climate Change, 1989

Aaron Wildavsky, But Is it True? A Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues,

1995.

S.H. Wittwer, Food, Climate and Carbon Dioxide, 1995.

Alternatively, you can read the much shorter three-part series on the science of global warming

by scientists Jay H. Lehr and Richard S. Bennett that ran in 2003 in Environment & Climate

News, a monthly publication of The Heartland Institute.

Part 1: A Climate Change Primer: It's the Sun

Part 2: A Climate Change Primer: Solar and Orbital Variation

Part 3: A Climate Change Primer: Computer Models and the Need for More Research

Another alternative is to go to The Heartland Institute’s home page and click on the PolicyBot

button. Choose “environment” from the list of topics that comes up, and then any one of the 10

subtopics on climate change. Each subtopic will present you with titles, authors, publication

information, reviews, and links to dozens of recent studies and commentaries on every aspect of

the global warming debate. All together, there are nearly 1,000 documents on global warming

available through PolicyBot. The service is free.

5. Crichton on Other Environmental Issues

The characters in State of Fear also debate deforestation, endangered species, sustainable

development, DDT, and many other hot environmental topics. Here are some highlights from those

discussions:

California’s forests have continuously changed their composition--“each thousand-year period was

different from the one before it”; Indians actively managed the changes with fire and agriculture

(pp. 404-406);

nobody knows how many species there are in the world, and estimates of extinction rates are

simply expressions of opinion and not science (p. 422);

silicon breast implants did not cause disease and power lines do not cause cancer (p. 456)

mankind does not know how to manage ecosystems, as is demonstrated by the gross

mismanagement of Yellowstone National Park (pp. 484-486);

banning DDT was “arguably the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century” since DDT was a

proven lifesaver that posed no threat to human health (p. 487-488); and
the biggest cause of environmental destruction is poverty, not prosperity (p. 564);

6. Crichton Is Right Again!

Once again, Crichton is right on target on these environmental controversies. Books that back him

up include those by Ronald Bailey, Jay H. Lehr, Dixy Lee Ray with Lou Guzzo, and Aaron

Wildavsky in the list above, as well as the following:

Dennis T. Avery, Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic, 1995.

John A. Baden (ed.), Environmental Gore: A Constructive Response to ‘Earth in the Balance’,

1994.

Joseph Bast, Peter .J. Hill, and Richard Rue, Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to

Environmentalism, 1995, rev. edition 1996.

Ben Bolch and Harold Lyons, Apocalypse Not: Science, Economics, and Environmentalism, 1993.

Alston Chase, In a Dark Wood: The Fight over Forests and the Myths of Nature, 2001.

Alston Chase, Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America’s First National Park, 1986.

Thomas R. DeGregori, Bountiful Harvest: Technology, Food Safety, and the Environment, 2002.

Jack W. Dini, Challenging Environmental Mythology: Wrestling Zeus, 2003.

Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on the Earth, 1995.

Michael Fumento, Science Under Siege, 1993.

Peter Huber, Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists, a Conservative

Manifesto, 1999.

Björn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, 2002.

Steven J. Milloy, Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams, 2001.

Stephen Moore and Julian Simon, It’s Getting Better all the Time, 2000.

Julian Morris (ed.), Sustainable Development: Promoting Progress or Perpetuating Poverty?, 2002.

Julian Simon, The State of Humanity, 1995.

Richard L. Stroup, Eco-Nomics: What Everyone Should Know about Economics and the

Environment, 2003.

Reliable information on a wide range of environmental topics is available for free from PolicyBot on

Heartland’s Web site at http://www.heartland.org. Choose from more than 70 subtopics to easily

find research and commentary on everything from air pollution and animal rights to water and

wetlands.

7. Crichton on the Environmental Movement

Michael Crichton is also very critical of the environmental movement. In the fiction part of the

book he has characters say the following:

PETA, the animal rights group, funds ELF, an eco-terrorist group, and mainstream environmental

groups may be funding them as well. “Frankly, it’s a disgrace” (p. 182);

environmentalists have used “media manipulation” and scare tactics as part of a “global warming

sales campaign” to raise money and acquire political influence (p. 245);

environmentalists refuse to take into account the possible harms caused by the policies they

recommend, with the result that they advocate spending billions of dollars to save a single

hypothetical life (p. 488-489);

environmentalism organizations today “have big buildings , big obligations, big staffs. They may

trade on their youthful dreams, but the truth is, they’re now part of the establishment. And the

establishment works to preserve the status quo” (p. 565);

Crichton is careful not to accuse all environmentalists of being insincere. Only the leaders of

environmental organizations, who should know better, are portrayed as deliberately misleading the

media and general public in order to advance their careers. As for the rest of us, one character

says: “Caring is irrelevant. Desire to do good is irrelevant. All that counts is knowledge and

results” (p. 483).

8. Crichton Is Right Again!

Once again, Crichton is right in his analysis of the environmental movement. Many other authors

have observed that the leaders of today’s major environmental groups have lost sight of the

original purpose of identifying and solving environmental problems. Instead, they rely on scare

tactics and “junk science” to raise more than one billion dollars a year to support fancy corporate

offices, large well-paid staffs, and a political agenda that leans to the left of the general public.

Other authors who have arrived at similar conclusions include:

Wilfred Beckerman, Through Green-Colored Glasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered, 1996.
James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Cancer Scam: Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds to

Politics, 1998.
Indur M. Goklany, The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk

Assessment, 2001.
Wallace Kaufman, No Turning Back: Dismantling the Fantasies of Environmental Thinking, 1994.
S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, Environmental Cancer--A Political Disease? 1999.
Christopher Manes, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization, 1990.
Daniel T. Oliver, Animal Rights: The Inhumane Crusade, 1999.
Julian Simon, Hoodwinking the Nation, 1999.

More than two dozen recent commentaries on the tactics of the environmental movement can be

found on PolicyBot. Simply click on the PolicyBot button on Heartland’s home page, choose

“environment” from the menu, and then “enviro groups” from the list of subtopics. Or just click

here.

9. Toward a New Environmental Movement

In his “Author’s Message” at the end of State of Fear, Crichton summarizes some of his own

views on the issues his characters address earlier in the book. He also says:

We need a new environmental movement, with new goals and new organizations. We need more

people working in the field, in the actual environment, and fewer people behind computer screens.

We need more scientists and many fewer lawyers.

This is right on! Did you know the Sierra Club spends only about 7 percent of its budget on

“outdoor activities”? (It said so right on the back of the reply form that accompanied its direct

mail letters.) Is it right to call such an organization an “environmental” group when it is actually a

direct-mail house connected to a Washington DC-lobbying shop?

Beyond this, the message of State of Fear has serious public policy consequences:

Most of the environment and health protection regulations in the U.S. ought to be reformed so

they address real rather than imaginary risks, and concentrate on what works instead of the

liberal orthodoxy of big government solutions to every problem.

The U.S. is quite right to stay out of the Kyoto Protocol--the global warming treaty--and ought

to be doing more to persuade other countries of the world that the protocol is unnecessary,

premature, and unworkable.

Government should stop funding radical environmental groups--indeed, all environmental groups for

that matter--and should investigate the ties between ecoterrorist organizations, supposedly

mainstream environmental advocacy groups, and the foundations that fund them. When homes and

businesses are torched by environmental extremists, law enforcement authorities should determine

whether tax-exempt foundations helped buy the gasoline and matches those outlaws used to

commit their crimes.

Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism contains a succinct agenda for reforming

environmental laws and regulations. To go directly to the right chapter, click here.

The Cato Institute’s annual “Handbook for Congress” contains three chapters on how to reform

environmental regulations. You can go to Cato’s Web site and then search for chapters 43, 44,

and 45 ... or just click on the links below:
Cato Handbook: Environmental Protection
Cato Handbook: Environmental Health: Risks and reality
Cato Handbook: Global Warming

The Heritage Foundation publishes a similar book, the latest edition titled Issues 2004, that

offers a handy one-page summary of facts, talking points, and policy recommendations. You can

download it by clicking here.

A vision for a new environmental movement has been spelled out by many authors, including several

of those mentioned in Section 8. Additional books that set forth positive agendas include:

Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Free Market Environmentalism, revised edition, 2001.

Joseph Bast, Peter .J. Hill, and Richard Rue, Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to

Environmentalism, 1995, rev. edition 1996.

John D. Graham (ed.), Harnessing Science for Environmental Regulation, 1991.

John and Sean Paling, Up to Your Armpits in Alligators? How to sort out what risks are worth

worrying about! 1994.

Peter VanDoren, Chemicals, Cancer, and Choices, 1999.

For shorter commentaries on a sound-science, free-market approach to environmental protection,

click on the PolicyBot button on Heartland’s home page, choose “environment” from the menu, and

then “free-market” from the list of subtopics. Or just click here.

10. More on the Subject by Michael Crichton

Crichton addressed many of the issues that figure prominently in State of Fear in a speech he

delivered on January 17, 2003, at Caltech. The complete text of that speech is available here.

Crichton explored the difficulty of distinguishing fantasy from reality--and offered advice

relevant to the global warming debate--in a speech delivered on September 15, 2003 to the

Commonwealth Club. The complete text of that speech is available here.

On January 2, Crichton was interviewed by Jasper Gerard in the January 2, 2005 Sunday Times

[London]. It’s an excellent overview of the controversy from a British perspective. For example,

Gerard writes:

If you doubt Crichton’s research, he offers enough footnotes citing scientific journals to fill a

hefty volume of their own. As a Harvard physician and at the age of 22 a visiting anthropology

lecturer at Cambridge, he is in nobody’s intellectual slipstream. It is not so much that Crichton is

being reactionary; rather, his view offends our almost religious veneration of green issues, a faith

in mother earth which holds that driving to the bottle bank in a belching 4x4 is a profound act

of worship.

11. Sources of More Research and Commentary

An excellent place to start is The Heartland Institute’s “Environment Issue Suite” at

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10488. It begins with an essay by James M. Taylor,

managing editor of Environment & Climate News, explaining the meaning of “common-sense

environmentalism” and directing readers to the huge collection of research and commentary

available on Heartland’s Web site.

Also on Heartland’s Web site is the complete text of Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to

Environmentalism, by Joseph Bast, Peter J. Hill, and Richard Rue (Madison Books, 1994, rev.

paperback edition 1996), http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10489. This pathbreaking

book lays out in plain language the real facts behind a dozen environmental issues--including global

warming, resource depletion, chemicals, and nuclear energy--and presents a free-market paradigm

for doing a better job protecting human health and the environment.

Heartland’s Web site also contains every issue of Environment & Climate News since this important

national monthly publication was launched in 1997,

http://www.heartland.org/Publications.cfm?pblId=1. E&CN covers the national debate over global

warming and other environmental controversies from a sound-science, free-market perspective,

making it unique among national monthly publications. Regular contributors includes a Who’s Who

of free-market environmentalism, including Patrick Michaels, S. Fred Singer, Bonner Cohen, Ben

Lieberman, Steven Milloy, Myron Ebell, Joel Schwartz, Jonathan Adler, Jay Lehr, Paul Driessen,

Sallie Baliunas, and Willie Soon.

Other Web sites with good critical commentary on environmental issues and the environmental

movement include:

American Enterprise Institute
Capital Research Center
Cato Institute
Climate Audit
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Heritage Foundation
The Independent Institute
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Center for Public Policy Research
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition
PERC
www.CO2science.org

12. What You Can Do

Michael Crichton’s State of Fear presents very strong criticism of the leaders of the nation’s big

environmental advocacy organizations, and no doubt they will attempt to discredit Crichton, just

as they have S. Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Sallie Balliunas, Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling,

and the late Dixy Lee Ray. The difference this time, however, is that all those dissenters are or

were prominent scientists respected by their peers but relatively unknown to the general public.

Crichton is not a scientist, but he has accurately summarized their findings in a book that will

reach millions of readers in the coming months, and tens of millions in the coming years.

You can help make sure Crichton’s contribution to the debate is taken seriously and has lasting

consequences:

Buy copies of the book for friends, relatives, coworkers, and opinion-leaders. This book makes a

great gift for people you know who would never read a “political” book or a nonfiction discussion

of global warming.

Write your own reviews, op-eds, and letters to the editor citing State of Fear and repeating its

author’s arguments. The “mainstream” environmentalists will first try to ignore Crichton, then

discredit him, and finally launch an all-out attack on him. You should be part of the defense by

writing letters and posting your ideas on blogs.

Support organizations that support sound science and market-based environmental protection. Most

of them were mentioned earlier, and they include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland

Institute, and PERC. They need and merit your financial support. (To become a member of donor

of The Heartland Institute, click here.)

Stop funding radical environmental groups, and urge people you know to do the same. They do not

deserve your membership dollars or contributions. When you receive their fundraising letters, use

the postage-paid reply envelopes to explain why you are not funding them.

Stay abreast of the debate by visiting this Web site and some of the Web sites cited earlier.

Only by being informed and aware can we create a “new environmental movement, with new goals

and new organizations.”

Visit Crichton's official Web site at http://www.crichton-official.com/index.shtml and spend time

there. Take part in the State of Fear message forums. And if you come across any Web forums

or blogs that are attacking Crichton's book, please let me know! That way, we can share those

links here and get Crichton's defenders to participate on those blogs, too.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joseph L. Bast (jbast@heartland.org) is president of The Heartland Institute.

          Opening Remarks at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change
          Written By: Joseph L. Bast
          Published In: News Release
          Publication Date: March 2, 2008
          Publisher: The Heartland Institute

          Opening Remarks by
          Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute
          March 2, 2008

          Click here for a PDF of this document

          Good evening, and welcome to the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. I am Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute, and along with James Taylor, I will be your cohost tonight and for the next two days.

          This dinner kicks off a truly historic event, the first international conference devoted to answering questions overlooked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We’re asking questions such as:

              o how reliable are the data used to document the recent warming trend?

              o how much of the modern warming is natural, and how much is likely the result of human activities?

              o how reliable are the computer models used to forecast future climate conditions? and

              o is reducing emissions the best or only response to possible climate change?

          Obviously, these are important questions. Yet the IPCC pays little attention to them or hides the large amount of doubt and uncertainty surrounding them.

          Are the scientists and economists who ask these questions just a fringe group, outside the scientific mainstream? Not at all. A 2003 survey of 530 climate scientists in 27 countries, conducted by Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch at the GKSS Institute of Coastal Research in Germany, found

              o 82 percent said global warming is happening, but only

              o 56 percent said it’s mostly the result of human causes, and only

              o 35 percent said models can accurately predict future climate conditions.

          Only 27 percent believed “the current state of scientific knowledge is able to provide reasonable predictions of climate variability on time scales of 100 years.”

          That’s a long ways from “consensus.” It’s actually pretty close to what the American public told pollsters for the Pew Trust in 2006:

              o 70 percent thought global warming is happening,

              o only 41 percent thought it was due to human causes,

              o and only 19 percent thought it was a high-priority issue.

          The alarmists think it’s a “paradox” that the more people learn about climate change, the less likely they are to consider it a serious problem. But as John Tierney with The New York Times points out in a blog posted just a day ago, maybe, just maybe, it’s because people are smart rather than stupid.

          And incidentally, 70 percent of the public oppose raising gasoline prices by $1 to fight global warming, and 80 percent oppose a $2/gallon tax increase, according to a 2007 poll by The New York Times and CBS News.

          I’ve got news for them: Reducing emissions by 60 to 80 percent, which is what the alarmists claim is necessary to “stop global warming,” would cost a lot more than $1 a gallon.

          The United Nations, environmental groups, and too often the reporters who cover the climate change debate are the ones who are out of step with the real “consensus.” They claim to be certain that global warming is occurring, convinced it is due to human causes, and 100 percent confident we can predict future climates.

          Who’s on the fringe of scientific consensus? The skeptics, or the alarmists?

          These questions go to the heart of the issue: Is global warming a crisis, as we are so often told by media, politicians, and environmental activists? Or is it moderate, mostly natural, and unstoppable, as we are told by many distinguished scientists?

          Former Vice President Al Gore has said repeatedly that there is a “consensus” in favor of his alarmist views on global warming. And of course, he’s not alone.

          Two weeks ago, Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, when told of our conference, said, “You could have a convention of all the scientists who dispute climate change in a relatively small phone booth.” (Denver Post, February 12, 2008).

          RealClimate.org predicted that no real scientists would show up at this conference.

          Well ...

          We have with us, tonight and tomorrow, more than 200 scientists and other experts on climate change, from Australia, Canada, England, France, Hungary, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and of course the United States.

          They come from the University of Alabama, Arizona State, Carleton, Central Queensland, Delaware, Durham, and Florida State University.

          From George Mason, Harvard, The Institute Pasteur in Paris, James Cook, John Moores, Johns Hopkins, and the London School of Economics.

          From The University of Mississippi, Monash, Nottingham, Ohio State, Oregon State, Oslo, Ottawa, Rochester, Rockefeller, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

          And from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Suffolk University, the University of Virginia, Westminster School of Business (in London), and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

          And I apologize if I left anyone out.

          These scientists and economists have been published thousands of times in the world’s leading scientific journals and have written hundreds of books. If you call this the fringe, where’s the center?

          Hey Jim Martin, does this look like a phone booth to you?

          Hey RealClimate, can you hear us now?

          These scientists and economists deserve to be heard. They have stood up to political correctness and defended the scientific method at a time when doing so threatens their research grants, tenure, and ability to get published. Some of them have even faced death threats for daring to speak out against what can only be called the mass delusion of our time.

          And they must be heard, because the stakes are enormous.

          George Will, in an October Newsweek column commenting on Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, wrote that if nations impose the reductions in energy use that Al Gore and the folks at RealClimate call for, they will cause “more preventable death and suffering than was caused in the last century by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot combined.”

          It takes only four Norwegian socialist members or ex-members of Parliament to win a Peace Prize, so I’ll put George Will’s Pulitzer Prize and his recent Bradley Prize up against Gore’s Nobel any day.

          You’ve probably read some of the attacks that have appeared in the blogosphere and in print directed against this conference, and against The Heartland Institute. Let me repeat for the record here tonight what appears prominently on our Web site:

              o No corporate dollars were used to help finance this conference.

              o The Heartland Institute has 2,700 donors, and gets about 16 percent of its income from corporations.

              o Heartland gets less than 5 percent of its income from all energy-producing companies combined. We are 95 percent carbon free.

          And let me further add to the record:

              o The honoraria paid to all of the speakers appearing at this conference add up to less than the honorarium Al Gore gets paid for making a single speech, and less than what his company makes selling fake carbon “off-sets” in a week.

              o It is no crime for a think tank or advocacy group to accept corporate funding. In fact, corporations that fail to step forward and assure that sensible voices are heard in this debate are doing their shareholders, and their countries, a grave disservice.

          We’re not doing this for the money, obviously. The Heartland Institute is in the “skeptics” camp because we know alarmism is a tool that has been used by opponents of individual freedom and free enterprise since as early as 1798, when Thomas Malthus predicted that food supply would fail to keep up with population growth.

          We opposed global warming alarmism before we received any contributions from energy corporations and we’ll continue to address it after many of them have found ways to make a fast buck off the public hysteria.

          We know which organizations are raking in millions of dollars a year in government and foundation grants to spread fear and false information about climate change. It’s not The Heartland Institute, and it’s not any of the 50-plus cosponsoring organizations that helped make this conference possible.

          The alarmists in the global warming debate have had their say--over and over again, in every newspaper in the country practically every day and in countless news reports and documentary films. They have dominated the media’s coverage of this issue. They have swayed the views of many people. Some of them have even grown very rich in the process, and others still hope to.

          But they have lost the debate.

          Winners don’t exaggerate. Winners don’t lie. Winners don’t appeal to fear or resort to ad hominem attacks.

          As George Will also wrote, “people only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues.”

          We invited Al Gore to speak to us tonight, and even agreed to pay his $200,000 honorarium. He refused. We invited some of the well-known scientists associated with the alarmist camp, and they refused.

          All we got are a few professional hecklers registered from Lyndon LaRouche, DeSmogBlog, and some other left-wing conspiracy groups. If you run into them over the course of the next two days, please be kind to them ... and call security if they aren’t kind to you.

          Skeptics are the winners of EVERY scientific debate, always, everywhere. Because skepticism, as T.H. Huxley said, is the highest calling of a true scientist.

          No scientific theory is true just because a majority of scientists say it is. Scientific theories are only provisionally true until they are falsified by data that can be better explained by a different theory. And it is by falsifying current theories that scientific knowledge advances, not by consensus.

          The claim that global warming is a “crisis” is itself a theory. It can be falsified by scientific fact, just as the claim that there is a “consensus” that global warming is man-made and will be a catastrophe has been dis-proven by the fact that this conference is taking place.

          Which reminds me ... the true believers at RealClimate are now praising an article posted on salon.com by Joseph Romm--a guy who sells solar panels for a living, by the way--saying “‘consensus’? We never claimed there was a ‘consensus’!”

          And notorious alarmist John Holdren a couple weeks ago said “‘global warming’? We never meant ‘global warming.’ We meant “‘global climate disruption’!”

          I’d say this was a sign of victory, but that would suggest their words and opinions matter. It’s too late to move the goal posts, guys. You’ve already lost.

          It is my hope, and the reason The Heartland Institute organized this conference, that public policies that impose enormous costs on millions of people, in the U.S. and also around the world, will not be passed into law before the fake “consensus” on global warming collapses.

          Once passed, taxes and regulations are often hard to repeal. Once lost, freedoms are often very difficult to retrieve.

          Joseph L. Bast (jbast@heartland.org) is president of The Heartland Institute.

As for the eventual fall of South Vietnam--to be covered by Moyar in a planned second volume of

his history--according to the New York Sun, "Mr. Moyar said the North Vietnamese only

attempted their 1975 attack when convinced that America would not counter this violation of the

Paris Agreement." And what gave the North this confidence? The Sun recounts the history:

"Between 1972 and 1975, America's Congress passed a series of pieces of legislation that

strangled the Republic of South Vietnam of resources and blocked any hope of an American air

campaign.... These included the Second Supplemental Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1973,

which blocked funding to 'support directly or indirectly combat activities in or over Cambodia,

Laos, North Vietnam or South Vietnam'; the Continuing Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1974,

and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973, which went so far as to prevent third-party countries

from assisting the South Vietnamese so long as they received American aid."

This new view of how the Vietnam War ended is summed up by Max Boot:

By 1972 most of the south was judged secure and the South Vietnamese armed forces were able

to throw back the Easter Offensive with help from lots of American aircraft but few American

soldiers. If the US had continued to support Saigon with a small troop presence and substantial

supplies, there is every reason to believe that South Vietnam could have survived.... But after

the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, we all but cut off South Vietnam, even while its

enemies across the borders continued to be resupplied by their patrons in Moscow and Beijing.
This thesis is still somewhat new and controversial--but there is enough truth to it that it is

beginning to stick. Whatever the failures of American strategy in Vietnam, there is no doubt that

the anti-war left pushed for American failure and accomplished it by persistent and vigorous

legislation. And that is the crucial issue. If the architects of the Vietnam War in the Johnson

administration can be criticized (as Moyar does) for not doing enough to win the war, the later

anti-war left actively pursued American defeat and humiliation as their goal. They didn't merely

want us to withdraw; they wanted us to lose, and they did whatever was necessary to make sure

that happened.

So instead of being a story of the failure of imperialist, war-mongering Republicans, the Vietnam

War was the story of two separate failures by Democrats. The Democrats who started the war

held back from using the force necessary to win it--and the Democrats who ended the war

deliberately knocked all of the remaining props out from under the South Vietnamese government

to ensure the defeat of an American ally.

This is the wider Vietnam story that the left has never understood. They have always regarded

Vietnam and Watergate as the glory days they long to relive. It was a time in which their

political faction was temporarily triumphant, hounding two hated presidents out of office in

disgrace.

But for everyone else, those events and their aftermath--the whole "national malaise" of the

1970s--was a painful period of national humiliation, for which we are still paying the price. The

collapse of American power and credibility, combined with the "Vietnam Syndrome" that enshrined

timidity as the cornerstone of American foreign policy, emboldened the Soviet Union and

encouraged its invasion of Afghanistan--which gave birth to the "mujahadeen," the movement

that gave Osama bin Laden his start and established his reputation. It also led to President

Carter's withdrawal of support for the shah of Iran, which assured the success of the Ayatollah

Khomeini's Islamic Revolution.

So the twin pillars of the contemporary Islamist threat--al-Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of

Iran--owe their origins to the collapse of American power in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

What new disasters wait to be spawned in the aftermath of a self-imposed defeat in Iraq?

Samuel Johnson is supposed to have said that nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of

a hanging. What will the American people do when they are required to meditate seriously, for

the first time, on the full, concrete ramifications of a defeat in Iraq? What will they think when

they hear Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasting of Iran's eagerness to fill the "power vacuum" that will

open up in Iraq after the "collapse" of "the political power of the occupiers"?

Will the American people--offered even the glimmer of a possible victory by the success of the

"surge"--decline to repeat the painful history of Vietnam?

If they do, then the left will finally have lost the Vietnam War.

Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Excerpts from the Koran are

shown with images from 9/11
It intersperses these with images of a Koran and the text of a sura from Islam's holiest tome,

which translated from Arabic implores the faithful to "terrorize the enemies of Allah."

The film carries no commentary and relies purely on the pictures of the terrorist attacks, as well

as a beheading and a vision of a future Holland where homosexuals and alternative thinkers are

tortured, to carry Wilders' perceived vision of  "reality."

"I am a politician," Wilders said recently. "I think that Islam and the Koran present a danger for

our country and I want to warn against it. I think I have made a good film within the boundaries

of the law. If something should now happen, then it is solely the responsibility of those people

who use violence."

Dutch government distances itself from Wilders

The Dutch government, fearful of reprisals similar to those which followed the reproduction

across Europe of the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, pressured Wilders not to release

the movie but to little effect.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Balkenende rejected Wilders'

interpretation of Islam
"This film equates Islam with violence and we reject this interpretation," said Prime Minister Jan

Peter Balkenende. "The vast majority of Muslims reject extremism and violence. In fact the

victims are often also Muslims"

Initial reactions from the Muslim community in the Netherlands were restrained. The evening

after the film's release passed without incident, in contrast to the unrest that swept the country

following the murder by an Islamic militant in 2004 of film director Theo van Gogh, another

Dutch artist who was accused of offending Islam.

However, Iran and Indonesia slammed the film.

Iran called it film heinous, blasphemous and anti-Islamic and called on European governments to

block any further showing.    Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and a former

Dutch colony, also condemned the film.

"We are of the view that the film has a racist flavour and is an insult to Islam, hidden under the

cover of freedom of expression," a foreign ministry spokesman said. "We call on Indonesian

people not to be incited."

Prime Minister Balkenende praised the efforts of his government to defuse Muslim anger in the

months preceding the release of the film and welcomed the initial Muslim response.

"The government is heartened by the initial restrained reactions of Dutch Muslim organizations,"

he said. "The Dutch government stands for a society in which freedom and respect go hand in

hand... Let us solve problems by working together."

Dutch politicians distanced themselves from Wilders and his film.

"The Netherlands does not need Wilders as a filmmaker," said Mark Rutte, leader of the Dutch

Liberal VVD party -- of which Wilders himself was a member until being thrown out in September

2004. "We need Wilders as a legislator, to debate about the Netherlands and to find solutions

for serious problems, including the problems of integration and immigration."

Minister of Integration Ella Vogelaar said the film could increase people's fears of Islamic

radicalism. "The first half of the film contained shocking material," she said.

Dutch Muslims wait, international anger simmers

Muslim groups have appealed for calm and mosques plan to open their doors to the public on

Friday to defuse tension.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Dutch Muslims have recated

with restraint to the film
Fouad Sidali, a leading member of the Muslim community in Holland, called for moderate

responses. "We Muslims in the Netherlands are opposed to any forms of violence and aggression,"

Sidali said. "We are Dutch; we love our country and abide by the constitution."

Moslems in other areas of the world, however, have not been as magnanimous. Before the film's

release, demonstrators had already taken to the streets from Afghanistan to Indonesia to burn

Dutch and Danish flags, and the governments of Pakistan and Iran sharply criticized Wilders'

project.

NATO has expressed concern the film could worsen security for foreign forces in Afghanistan,

including 1,650 Dutch troops.

Despite Wilders' own assertion, one that has been supported by a number of Dutch legislators,

that he did not break any blasphemy laws with the film, a court in Rotterdam will hear an

injunction against him on Friday brought by the Dutch Islamic Federation.

Cartoonist to issue writ from secure location

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Westergaard's cartoon

continues to cause outrage
Wilders may also find himself embroiled in another court case brought against him by the

cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose Mohammed caricature, which opens and closes the film,

sparked violent protests by Muslims worldwide in 2006.

"My cartoon has been misused again. It has been pulled from its original context and set in a

completely different one," Westergaard told Danish broadcaster DR. "It is a drawing aimed

specifically against Islamic terror that uses interpretations of the Koran and Islam as spiritual

ammunition," Westergaard, who remains in hiding after death threats, said.

"Wilders has not asked me for permission, so it is simply a case of violation of copyright rules,"

Westergaard said, adding he would contact legal experts Friday.
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