Comprehensive Response to Michael Crichton's "State of Fear"

There will be a page-by-page response here eventually.

Overall, while he makes some good points regarding the state of knowledge within the public and brings up a few relevant scientific points (e.g. sea levels not currently rising dramatically, contrary to popular belief), his only actual scientific evidence that he uses to contradict the prevailing CO₂ greenhouse theory is that of the "Urban Heat Island" effect: that the warming trend in the global temperature record is an artifact of thermometers placed in areas that were rural in the past and are now urban (cities tend to be warmer than surroundings due to all the concrete etc.). However, this effect has already been shown to be statistically insignificant in several studies. Furthermore, Crichton contradicts himself when he uses the graph of U.S. temperature trends over the past 100 years (to illustrate that the U.S. has not warmed significantly over that time), but this graph is then in direct contradiction with the "Urban Heat Island" theory given the rapid urbanization of U.S. cities over the same time span.