July 10, 2005

RALEIGH – As the North Carolina General Assembly considers a bill to create the South’s first state commission on climate change, a leading expert on the issue will be in Raleigh Tuesday to discuss global warming – on the same day that copies of Michael Crichton’s blockbuster State of Fear will be distributed to state lawmakers.

Dr. Fred Singer, a physicist affiliated with George Mason University and the University of Virginia, is one of the nation’s foremost experts on climate trends and devised the basic instrument used by scientists to measure stratospheric ozone. Now head of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, Singer will speak in Raleigh on Tuesday, July 12, at a 10:00 am press conference at the General Assembly and later at a John Locke Foundation luncheon at noon at the Velvet Cloak Inn.

Singer served as a scientific advisor to novelist Michael Crichton as he wrote State of Fear, a bestselling novel that explores the climate-change controversy. The John Locke Foundation will distribute copies of State of Fear prior to the Tuesday press conference to every member of the General Assembly as well as other state policymakers.

While the story line of Crichton’s novel is fiction, the book contains well-documented facts about global warming and the science of climate change. Dr. Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, describes Crichton’s book as “a careful review of the literature on climate change embedded in an adventure novel.”

Dr. Roy Cordato, vice president for research at the John Locke Foundation and author of an analysis of the effects of climate-change regulation on North Carolina’s economy, said that state leaders should become familiar with the wide range of scientific evidence and views on the issue before making any potentially costly decisions.

“The science-journal articles referenced in State of Fear would be a good place to start,” he said, “while the story itself helps to dramatize how good science can be corrupted by bad politics.”

For more information about Singer’s visit to Raleigh on Tuesday to discuss climate change, call Dr. Cordato at 919-828-3876 or visit JLF’s main website.