Yesterday, I set upon the way myth is being used to create a new American political tool .  Today, I found this:

Unreal.

First, remember that Inhofe was the idiot who said:

I'm not going to go into just how much of an jerk Inhofe is - I think you're already aware of that - and Real Climate does a great job of tearing down everyone of his inane arguments HERE.  But Crichton....I mean....he's a SCIENCE FICTION WRITER NOT A SCIENTIST!

Crichton's latest book "State of Fear" is essentially about how eco-terrorists are using the hype of global warming to further their own personal goals.  The book is crowned with footnotes aimed at convincing readers of his scientific bona fides. Crichton's hero, Richard John Kenner--an MIT professor of geoenvironmental engineering battles the eco-terrorists across the globe and continually lectures the reader on the basics of climate science.  Crichton provides actual scientific citations to back up Kenner's contrarian arguments in his footnotes.  But they are far from real.  Some of his citations refer to actual scientific publications. But most often, they distort the work of scientists who accept the mainstream scientific view that human greenhouse gas emissions fuel global climate change.  Chris Mooney points to the following example (one of many):

At the end of the book, Crichton gives us an author's message. In it, he gives us his estimate, ~0.8 C for the global warming that will occur over the next century and claims that, since models differ by 400% in their estimates, his guess is as good as theirs. This is a crock. Real Climate points out that:

In an appendix, Crichton compares global warming to the 19th Century eugenics movement. He argues, that since eugenics was studied in prestigious universities and supported by charitable foundations, and now, so is global warming, they must somehow be related. Huh?

The worst thing about Crichton, is that he doesn't understand how science works (he is, sadly, like most Americans,).   He also confuses the way science is done with the way science-based public policy is made. Scientists can continue to debate and argue the details, but public policy process can't wait, for small, inconsequential disputes to be settled between the consensus view and the outliers.  Think of if we did that with a flu vaccine, or the use of a certain chemical food additive.

When Crichton and Inhofe got together, the spouted the same old litany of stupidities like the claim that scientists were proclaiming an imminent ice age in the 1970s (not true), 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...).....blah, blah, blah...

Sen. Jeffords was, and rightly so, sickened at the way the committee sought testimony:

My point here is not to go into yet another round of arguments in the science or veracity of climate change.  Instead, I want to make the same point I did yesterday: In the past five years we've now crossed a threshold of myth and stepped into an unreality where fact and fiction intertwine to create an America of stories where nothing is real, science is dead and the truth is relative.  The Right-Wing has taken the American public for the ultimate Post-Modern roller coaster ride.

Real Climate says that:

The real question we are faced with is not whether humans are changing climate. The science on this is clear and we know that.  What we need to deal with is: what do we do about it?!? A Congressional committee concerned with energy should be a key player in exploring policy options to deal with the global warming threat. But when they bring forth a fiction writer - and one who is well-known to distort the research - they do the American people a despicable disservice.

Again, Chris Mooney: