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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (73876)	7/22/2006 11:48:45 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 360961

Senate questions Michael Crichton on global warming Yesterday, pulp fiction writer and global warming denier Michael Crichton testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - His last book, "State of Fear," was published more than nine months ago, but the reviews were still pouring in on Wednesday, even as Michael Crichton folded his 6-foot-9-inch frame into a seat to testify before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. "More silly than scary," the flier dropped off by the Natural Resources Defense Council said. "Notable mainly for its nuttiness," an analysis from the Brookings Institution said. "Does not reflect scientific fact," the Union of Concerned Scientists said. For all his previous works as a writer (13 novels, 4 nonfiction books, numerous screenplays) and his prominent career in Hollywood as a writer, producer or director of 13 films and as the creator of the popular television series "ER," little has yanked Mr. Crichton so deeply into political controversy as "State of Fear," an environmental thriller that casts doubt on the widely held notion that human activities contribute to global warming. [...] (Keep reading, it gets worse) [NYT permalink] So, global warming deniers like Senator James M. Inhofe have been reduced to calling witnesses who write fiction about how global warming is fiction. In other news, the Northwest Passage completely defrosted this summer. ctv.ca majikthise.typepad.com ======================== 28 Sep 2005 Inhofe and Crichton: Together at Last! Filed under: Climate Science Climate modelling— group @ 10:33 pm Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann Today we witnessed a rather curious event in the US Senate. Possibly for the first time ever, a chair of a Senate committee, one Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), invited a science fiction writer to advise the committee (Environment and Public Works), on science facts--in this case, the facts behind climate change. The author in question? None other than our old friend, Michael Crichton whom we've had reason to mention before (see here and here). The committee's ranking member, Senator James Jeffords (I) of Vermont, was clearly not impressed. Joining Crichton on climate change issues was William Gray of hurricane forecasting fame, Richard Benedick (a negotiator on the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting chemicals), and David Sandalow (Brookings Institution). As might be expected, we paid a fair bit of attention to the scientific (and not-so-scientific) points made. Many of the 'usual suspects' of half-truths and red herrings were put forth variously by Crichton, Gray, and Inhofe over the course of the hearing: the claim that scientists were proclaiming an imminent ice age in the 1970s (no, they weren't), the claim that the 1940s to 1970s cooling in the northern hemisphere disproves global warming (no, it doesn't), the claim that important pieces of the science have not been independently reproduced (yes, they have), the claim that global climate models can't reproduce past climate change (yes, they can) the claim that climate can't be predicted because weather is chaotic (wrong...) and so on. We won't dwell on the testimony that involved us personally since the underlying issues have been discussed and dealt with here before, though we will note that comments from both of us pointing out errors in the testimony were entered into the Senate record by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California). Instead, we will focus on the bigger picture. realclimate.org