The Shock Effect

I looked at the site with the article “Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion”. In this article a concerned scientist takes Crichton’s “facts” in State of Fear and elaborates on them more.

He tells the whole story behind the information presented in State of Fear. He does not deny the facts but demonstrates how Crichton did not provide all of the information that goes along with the statements and data he presents. The Author admits to some uncertainty about the exact outcomes of global warming (e.g. earth isn’t warming uniformly, sea levels difficult to measure, etc.) but stresses that these details do not deny the negative consequences of pollution/burning fossil fuels.

We tend to remember the shocking aspects of one’s argument. The author of this particular article takes Crichton’s shocking aspects and brings to light the other components that go along with the shock value. For example, it is true that some parts of the world are not heating up, but the whole earth will not warm/cool uniformly. There are two sides to each story. As we talked about in class, we tend to only see the more flashy sides of data and not the whole picture. This is how our ideas are formed regarding global warming, or any other controversial topic. The whole picture does not demand our attention like the shocking statistics/data do.