Not Thrilled by Crichton's Latest Thriller
 

     The Times' leading book critic Michiko Kakutani reviews Michael Crichton's latest thriller "State of Fear" ("Beware! Tree-Huggers Plot Evil to Save World"), and is not happy at all with the counterintuitive premise, which disputes global warming and takes on environmental radicalism.

     "The odious villains in Michael Crichton's new thriller, the folks (as President Bush might put it) who kill, maim and terrorize, aren't members of Al Qaeda or any other jihadi movement. They aren't Bondian bad guys like Goldfinger, Dr. No or Scaramanga. They aren't drug lords or gang members or associates of Tony Soprano. No, the evil ones in 'State of Fear' are tree-hugging environmentalists, believers in global warming, proponents of the Kyoto Protocol. Their surveillance operatives drive politically correct, hybrid Priuses; their hit men use an exotic, poisonous Australian octopus as their weapon of choice. Their unwitting (and sometimes, witting) allies are -- natch! -- the liberal media, trial lawyers, Hollywood celebrities, mainstream environmental groups (like the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society) and other blue-state apparatchiks."

     Later she writes: "The novel itself reads like a shrill, preposterous right-wing answer to this year's shrill, preposterous but campily entertaining global warming disaster movie 'The Day After Tomorrow.' In that special effects extravaganza, global warming (its dangers ignored by a Dick Cheneyesque vice president) is the enemy, leading to deadly climate changes and disturbances in the weather that leave New York flooded and frozen, and Los Angeles beset by swarms of killer tornadoes. In Mr. Crichton's ham-handed novel, the dangers of global warming are nothing but a lot of hype: scare scenarios, promoted by shameless environmentalists eager to use bad science to raise money and draw attention to their cause. For that matter, the ludicrous plot revolves around efforts by radical members of an environmental group called NERF (National Environmental Resource Fund) to surreptitiously trigger a series of natural disasters including a supersize hurricane and a giant tsunami that would hit California with 60-foot waves; these disasters would be timed to coincide with the group's big media conference, thereby awakening the public to the dangers of climate change wrought by global warming….After all, it's hard to imagine people buying this sorry excuse for a thriller on its storytelling merits alone."

For the Kakutani review in full, click here:

Now They Tell us: Kyoto Treaty "Deeply Flawed"
 

     Now that the Kyoto Protocol is officially the Kyoto Treaty (the greenhouse gas reduction pact was ratified and goes into effect February 16), the Times finally finds some flaws in it. A Monday story from Buenos Aires by Larry Rohter and Andrew Revkin, "Cheers, and Concern, for New Climate Pact." The cut-out line reads: "A gathering to hail the Kyoto treaty, flaws and all."

     They writes: "With the United States keeping to the sidelines, delegates from more than 190 countries have gathered here both to celebrate the enactment of the Kyoto Protocol, the first treaty requiring cuts in greenhouse gases linked to global warming, and to look beyond 2012, when its terms expire. Many delegates and experts concede that the pact, negotiated in 1997, is deeply flawed and that years of delays in finishing its rulebook mean that many adherents may have trouble meeting their targets for emissions cuts. Its impact will also be limited because it exempts developing countries, including fast-industrializing giants like China and India, from emissions restrictions, and lacks the support of the United States, the world's dominant source of the heat-trapping gases."

     It would have been nice if the Times had shown more of that skepticism while Kyoto was actually being debated.

     The story soon reverts to the liberal environmental outlook that treats manmade global warming not as a theory but as scientific certainty: "In a host of presentations, environmental and human rights groups have been showing how the accumulating gases stand to imperil some of the world's poorest countries and native cultures. More broadly, the conference reflects a world that remains deeply divided over what to do about the buildup of greenhouse gases that climate experts say has caused most of a 50-year warming trend. Experts now largely agree that if oil and coal burning continue to increase at current rates, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will more than double in this century from pre-industrial levels, causing warming that could disrupt climate patterns and raise sea levels."

     There are in fact many experts who don't agree with that premise -- but Rohter and Revkin don't give them a hearing.

For more from Rohter and Revkin, click here: 

Bushies Pushing for "Further Rollbacks" of Rights
 

     Arts editor Frank Rich's column, "The Plot Against Sex In America," again is short on art and long on his snarky brand of social liberalism, using a new biopic on controversial sexologist Alfred Kinsey as his weapon against right-wing prudery: "As for the right-wing groups that have targeted (with or without seeing it), they are the usual suspects, many of them determined to recycle false accusations that Kinsey was a pedophile, as if that might somehow make the actual pedophilia scandal in one church go away. But this crowd doesn't just want what's left of Kinsey's scalp. (He died in 1956.) Empowered by that Election Day 'moral values' poll result, it is pressing for a whole host of second-term gifts from the Bush administration: further rollbacks of stem-cell research, gay civil rights, pulchritude sightings at N.F.L. games and, dare I say it aloud, reproductive rights for women."

     Rich follows with exaggerated fretting worthy of easily spooked Times editorial writer Adam Cohen: "You see that when struggling kids are denied the same information about sexuality that was kept from their antecedents in the pre-Kinsey era; you see that when pharmacists in more and more states enforce their own 'moral values' by refusing to fill women's contraceptive prescriptions and do so with the tacit or official approval of local officials; you see it when basic information that might prevent the spread of lethal diseases is suppressed by the government because it favors political pandering over scientific fact."

For the full Rich, click here:

Conservatives Threaten to Turn Back Constitutional Clock
 

     Tuesday's edition brings a signed editorial from ever-sensitive editorialist Adam Cohen, "What's New in the Legal World? A Growing Campaign to Undo the New Deal." Even the cut-out line is revealing of the author's liberal interpretation of the Constitution as a "living document": "Trying to revive the pre-1937 Constitution."

     Cohen warns that conservative judges threaten to turn the clock back to a pre-New Deal America: "The New Deal made an unexpected appearance at the Supreme Court recently -- in the form of a 1942 case about wheat. Some prominent states' rights conservatives were asking the court to overturn Wickard v. Filburn, a landmark ruling that laid out an expansive view of Congress's power to legislate in the public interest. Supporters of states' rights have always blamed Wickard, and a few other cases of the same era, for paving the way for strong federal action on workplace safety, civil rights and the environment. Although they are unlikely to reverse Wickard soon, states' rights conservatives are making progress in their drive to restore the narrow view of federal power that predated the New Deal -- and render Congress too weak to protect Americans on many fronts."

     He follows up with a look at the dark days before 1937, when the Supreme Court saved America: "If the Supreme Court drifts rightward in the next four years, as seems likely, it could not only roll back Congress's Commerce Clause powers, but also revive other dangerous doctrines….In pre-1937 America, workers were exploited, factories were free to pollute, and old people were generally poor when they retired. This is not an agenda the public would be likely to sign onto today if it were debated in an election. But conservatives, who like to complain about activist liberal judges, could achieve their anti-New Deal agenda through judicial activism on the right. Judges could use the so-called Constitution-in-Exile to declare laws on workplace safety, environmental protection and civil rights unconstitutional."

For the rest of Cohen, click here:

Bin Laden Hunt "Sidetracked" by Iraq War?
 

     "A Hostile Land Foils the Quest for bin Laden," Monday's front-page story from James Risen and David Rohde on the difficult search for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, takes as fact the liberal argument that the Iraq war distracted from the hunt: "More than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and New York transformed Osama bin Laden into the most wanted man in the world, the search for him remains stalled, frustrated by the remote topography of his likely Pakistani sanctuary, stymied by a Qaeda network that remains well financed and disciplined, sidetracked by the distractions of the Iraq war, and, perhaps most significantly, limited by deep suspicion of the United States among Pakistanis."

     Far down in the long story, Risen and Rohde finally quote some (anonymous) officials to confirm that view: "Some American intelligence officials say that the war in Iraq provided a powerful new recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. The conflict has diverted resources -- C.I.A. paramilitary personnel and pilotless Predator surveillance aircraft -- from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002, several current and former intelligence and administration officials said. They contend the war in Iraq weakened the focus of the United States, giving Al Qaeda time to regroup. Pakistan has been a sanctuary for some Qaeda figures since soon after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. When the Taliban government fell in the winter of 2001, some Qaeda leaders went west to Iran, but a large group of Qaeda members, including many of Mr. bin Laden's lieutenants, went south to Pakistan, intelligence officials say."

For more on the hunt for bin Laden, click here: