From a reader:
I watched Charlie Rose’s interview of Michael Crichton last night. Very interesting. Charlie Rose is usually pretty non-confrontational, but when he and Crichton started discussing global warming–Rose got increasingly defensive. Crichton stuck to his guns, saying he acknowledges the planet is warming, it has gotten about 0.7 degrees warmer in 100 years, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and has increased 30% in the last 100 years, and we can expect the planet to warm some more. His problem with the global warming problem is the evidence is not being scientifically verified and that the problem is far far less than people make it out to be. He does not accept catastrophic scenarios. Crichton felt compelled to write on the topic after he reviewed the data and then challenged many of the scientists involved to explain away his doubts. They could not do so. When asked about Al Gore, Crichton said he likes Al personally very much, but that an Inconvenient Truth is not accurate and the 20 foot sea level rises are not a legitimate threat. He basically said, as diplomatically as possible, that Al Gore is relying too much on “experts” and has not verified this data himself. Crichton said people want to believe the worst and that is a driving factor in global warming. At dinner parties saying global warming is not a problem brings yawns or angry responses–everyone gets interested and animated when you say it is really bad. Environmental issues are highly charged emotionally so people often forget to be rational. Yes, imposing carbon controls and fuel economy are important and worthy things to do (within reason), but to spend literally trillions of dollars on this issue is nuts, compared to the host of other serious issues that need to be addressed in the world.