Jurrasic Dork
Over at the Common Sense Blog, Kit Smith rips into famed science-fiction writer Michael Crichton.
Jurassic Park was a standard techno-phobic cautionary tale about “playing God,” a la Frankenstein and Godzilla, but this time the evil culprit was cloning, and shoddy cage construction. This type of puritanical anti-science message has been a part of American fiction since Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote Rapaccini’s Daughter. You know the drill: Science is evil, and scientists are power-mad sociopaths with utter disregard for the consequences of their actions.
This is the message Crichton proliferates in his works of fiction; along with other insulting messages like working women are deranged, predatory nymphomaniacs, and the Japanese are attempting world domination. Harajuku girls aside, this is patently ridiculous. Yet Crichton, a writer of fiction, is being called upon by formerly venerable organizations as the Smithsonian and the United States government for his guidance navigating the confusing world of climate change.
Indeed I recall reading somewhere that George W Bush based a lot of his stance on climate change from his reading State of Fear, a Crichton novel that claims that climate change is a scam pulled by climate-scientists to keep their funding alive.
In late January of this year, Crichton was brought in as an “expert” at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), a neoconservative Washington “think” tank. Crichton delivered the keynote speech, entitled, “Science Policy in the 21st Century.” He has also appeared at the California Institute of Technology and on numerous news shows like “Today” and “20/20.” He wears dark suits, sets his glasses halfway down his nose, and speaks with authority. He seems to have reinvented himself, shedding the skin of mere novelist to reveal a shiny, winged policy wonk.
Most alarmingly, on September 28 Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) brought Crichton in to testify at a Senate Environmental Public Works Committee hearing, as their key witness, despite the fact that State of Fear is a novel, regardless of its bibliography and heavy annotation. You remember Inhofe. He’s the guy who called the threat of catastrophic global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” I’m sure his opinion in no way reflects the more than $518,000 he reportedly received from energy interests for his 2002 campaign.
Nice to see someone get stuck into this hack. Though I must admit, I loved West-World and The Andromeda Strain. — DS
Technorati Tags: climate change, environment, politics, USA
