John Locke Foundation Promotes Climate Fiction

The folks at Raleigh's John Locke Foundation apparently have given up on sticking to the facts in the debate over manmade climate change, as they're peddling a flat-out fictional account of the problem to the North Carolina General Assembly.

As the state House and Senate confer over a measure creating a state commission on climate change, the conservative pro-business think tank, which receives funds from fossil-fuel interests, is distributing to all lawmakers copies of Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear, a thriller in which scientific debate over global warming serves as a backdrop for romance and political intrigue.

While most scientific organizations warn that manmade climate change is a very real danger, Crichton in a statement on his Web site derides their viewpoint as politicized. In fact, he compares them to the early 20th century U.S. eugenics movement.

"I am not arguing that global warming is the same as eugenics," Crichton writes. "But the similarities are not superficial."

Crichton's novel draws on the work of Dr. S. Fred Singer, a climatologist and global warming skeptic whose Arlington, Va.-based Science & Environmental Policy Project receives funding from greenhouse gas polluter extraordinaire Exxon Mobil. Incidentally, the John Locke Foundation this week hosted Singer for a luncheon speaking event.

Science-based environmental organizations such as Environmental Defense have criticized Crichton's novel for demonstrating an incomplete understanding of technical issues and for giving short shrift to the large body of evidence and analysis supporting the seriousness of the climate-change problem we face.

"Wittingly or not, he is prone to selective use of data, indiscriminate acceptance of dubious sources and just plain errors of fact," according to ED's analysis of the novel.

Let's hope N.C. lawmakers are able to separate fact from fiction while enjoying a little summer pulp fiction.