GETTING WARMER.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 03-JAN-05

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Halfway through Michael Crichton's new thriller, "State of Fear," the hero, John Kenner, finds himself trapped with a comely blonde, dodging bolts of artificial lightning. Fortunately, Kenner, an agent for the government's National Security Intelligence Agency, has the presence of mind to advise the blonde to strip down to her underwear, and, as a result, the two survive long enough to save the world from a diabolical plot. Environmentalists are conspiring to blow off a piece of Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, swamp California with a tidal wave, and engineer flash floods in the American Southwest (this is where the artificial lightning comes in), all by way of convincing the public that global warming is an actual danger, when, as Kenner...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.