Why are writers of best-selling science-fiction thrillers more prone to be Denyers? Maybe its the focus on science-fiction rather than science fact.

Everybody knows about Michael Crichton, who announced his views in a ponderous, mistake-filled bestseller. He was one of my favorite fiction writers until that book, and Jurassic Park (the book) remains I think the best techno-thriller ever written.

I also generally like Dean Koontz, many of whose books are kind of a cross between Crichton and Stephen King, although he’s gotten a bit too religious of late. I just finished his book The Husband, a pretty good, pretty straightforward thriller.

His book The Taking is more macabre–and very religious at the end (which you will either love or hate). Annoyingly, it contains a brief, gratuitous scene with a “Dr. Randolph Templeton, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service”:

“The vast majority of meteorologists don’t believe there is any global warming,” Templeton replied with a note of impatience, “at least not any that isn’t natural and cyclical.”

Sad. For those who like science fiction thrillers, I would strongly recommend Koontz’s earlier works, especially Lightning–one of the best books of its kind (but I can’t tell you what kind without spoiling it), which opens: “A storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years…”

Wetlands International emphasizes that climate analyses used by the UN’s Conference on Climate Change underestimates the impact that emissions released from peatlands could have on global warming. A few statistics that Wetlands cites:

• 8% of all global emissions comes from the logging and draining of peatlands in Southeast Asia.
• There is more carbon currently stored in the peatlands than in the atmosphere.

A primary reason that the peatlands are drained is to plant palm oil, commonly harvested for biofuel, and pulpwood. That leads to a second concern storming the international stage: careless biofuel production.

For a quick introduction into how unsustainably-harvested biofuels could magnify the climate crisis, check out Grist’s piece here and ClimateProgress on ‘deforestation diesel’.

In the article Global Warming is So Yesterday, Thomas Lifson misunderstands not only climate science, but also this past weekend’s Live Earth concert.

Lifson botches his introductory hook by demonstrating his climate clueless factor. Lifson accuses alarmists of citing cold weather for the Johannesburg Live Earth concert’s low turnout, which seems to me like a rational reason to not attend an outdoor concert. But then Lifson turns around and cites the cold weather as a negation of global warming, which is way off mark. Cold weather still happens in a warming climate (just less frequently), and Lifson’s accusations are tangled.

Should any educated reader continue, Lifson goes on to bash the Live Earth concert turnout, but again, he misses the mark.

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