Where's the Outrage? : The Intersection

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Chris Mooney is a visiting associate in the Center for Collaborative History at Princeton University and the author of three books, The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America.

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Where's the Outrage?

Category: Global Warming
Posted on: February 15, 2006 11:39 AM, by Chris C. Mooney

The Progress Report just picked up on the news that Bush may have met with Michael Crichton on global warming, but with that exception, this story doesn't seem to be getting nearly the traction that it ought to. I'm going to order Fred Barnes' book to get more details. Meanwhile, if this report is true, it's interesting to contemplate what that would say about the role of Bush science adviser John Marburger, who is supposed to be ensuring that the president is well informed about matters of science. Either way, the news doesn't look good for Marburger. On the one hand, if he arranged the Crichton meeting, that means that he himself would have participated in channeling dubious science to the president. But on the other hand, if Marburger didn't have anything to do with the meeting, that would suggest that it's easy to go right around him to feed the president questionable science advice...

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Comments

How much clout does Marburger have with the President? (considering he recently made statements about evolution/ID that conflicted with Bush's)

Posted by: Phobos | February 15, 2006 12:10 PM

I don't think this is a big story. Crichton is a very poor source of info on climate issues, but meeting with him would simply be par for the course for GWB.

And Marburger is already so marginalized as to be essentially useless.

Posted by: P.M.Bryant | February 15, 2006 12:27 PM

As one of those darned furriners, I have no idea what's going on here. Who the heck is Michael Crichton?

Posted by: Corkscrew | February 15, 2006 12:39 PM

Maybe there's just not enough outrage to go around.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2006/02/poverty-of-press.html

The press is too busy drooling over the Cheney shooting incident to cover any other Bush related scandals, no matter how staggering they might be.

Posted by: Hume's Ghost | February 15, 2006 12:45 PM

It's only a paragraph or two, and was quoted (as you may have seen) on TPM Cafe. You know the gist already: Bush doesn't believe in AGW; Rove arranged a meeting with Michael Crichton; they had an hour-long talk and Bush "agreed" with everything Crichton said; but this couldn't be revealed because "environmentalists" would be outraged.

Barnes blithely assumes that the public really doesn't care about the state of planetary health; unfortunately, despite polls that say people believe in AGW, believe we should participate in the Kyoto Protocol, are willing to pay the price...he may be correct.

Posted by: Kit Stolz | February 15, 2006 1:14 PM

Corkscrew:

Best-selling techno-thriller writer, best known for "The Andromeda Strain" (if you're a borderline geezer) and "Jurassic Park." His stories are generally cautionary tales, describing the dangers of brain implants, killer gorillas, autonomous nanotech-bots, extraterrestrial germs and Japanese corporations.

His latest, "State of Fear," is about doughty truth-seekers battling evil scientists and environmentalists who want to cover up the horrible truth about global warming . . . that it doesn't exist.

In the book, and on a lecture circuit, Crichton provides arguments that suggesting that real-world scientists are trying to scare us with "junk science." (DDT bad for the environment? Bah! Cigarette smoke a health threat? Nah! Asbestos? Suck it in, it won't hurt you!)

This specious crap is way familiar to anyone who has watched industry groups and free-market think tanks operate. They're in the business of generating "F.U.D." -- fear, uncertainty, and doubt -- in order to keep the public and lawmakers off-balance.

Landing Crichton as a de facto champion against "junk science" is a major coup. It is astounding how many people now cite him as a reference when dismissing new evidence on greenhouse warming.

Posted by: Stefan Jones | February 15, 2006 1:16 PM

It's hard enough to get the US press to report about climate change, period. Getting them to report on George Bush meeting with a fiction writer who wrote about climate change--now that's a complete nonstarter.

Climate change is a big story overseas. It barely gets press here. Joe voter says "Yeah, climate change, isn't it that thing that Al Gore droned on about? Oh, by the way I'm outta here. Toss me the keys to my SUV."

Then he drives off to see the next thriller by that totally awesome Michael Crichton.

(Hopefully sometime soon the adults will be in charge...)

Posted by: Jon Winsor | February 15, 2006 1:31 PM

Crichton is a novelist (Jurassic Park, for example) who is also a global warming denier. It turns out he also believes in mental spoon bending, like Uri Geller, the discredited psychic. So much for his scientific credentials.

Posted by: Mark Paris | February 15, 2006 1:37 PM

All--
The TPM Cafe posting is here:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/26552

Todd Gitlin provides more context for what happened, quoting directly from Barnes' book. It appears Rove set up the Crichton meeting. Wonder what Dr. Marburger thinks of that.....

Posted by: Chris Mooney | February 15, 2006 1:51 PM

Here's some outrage.

Well, mock outrage. More specifically, a cartoon about outraged scientists. Read it:
http://www.thepaincomics.com/Scientists%20Riot.jpg

Posted by: G | February 15, 2006 2:56 PM

This story ran in the New York Times on Sunday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/19warming.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. (registration required)

It's also worth mentioning that Crichton was announced as the forthcoming recipient of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' 2006 Journalism Prize. Yes, you read that right:
http://www.aapg.org/houston/openingsession.cfm.

That story was run in Bob Park's APS What's New column on 10th Feb:
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn021006.html.

Posted by: Jonathan Sanderson | February 20, 2006 6:26 PM