On p. 709, one of Crichton's key characters, John Kenner, who he presents as the level-headed, intelligent understander of all things climate, says, after describing the ordinary violence of the earth's weather:
The nasty little apes that call themselves human beings can do nothing except run and hide. For these same apes to imagine they can stabilize this atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. They can't control the climate.
Yet we know that to be undeniably false. We are, in fact, already controlling the climate. We've raised it a degree or so Celsius in the last 100 years. "Unequivocally" according to the best climate science on the planet. We may not be "controlling" it very well--more like sending it out of control. The point he was trying to make is that humans are just too small to make any difference to the enormity of the earth's systems. Wrong.
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