'Climategate' Heats Up

By Jack Cashill

A press release from filmmaker and marine biologist, Randy Olson, suggests that the media may not be able to bury the brewing global warming collusion scandal. Writes Olson:

An enormous event took place this week in the issue of global warming. A group of climate skeptics hacked a research center in the U.K. and stole years worth of emails of climate scientists talking candidly about how to deal with skeptics.

Olson, who is promoting his new movie, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, reports, "They're calling it "Climategate" already. The climate science world is ablaze with the issue. The war between the scientists and the skeptics just got turned up several notches."

What makes Olson's release interesting is that he is not necessarily among the skeptics. A Harvard Ph.D., he also produced, Flock of Dodos, a satiric look at the Intelligent Design movement. To its credit, Sizzle, like Dodos, allows the skeptics to make their case, but Olson's sympathies are with the scientific community.

Olson cites a New York Times article by "my buddy Andy Revkin." Revkin quotes Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist and prominent skeptic who appears in Sizzle. Says Michaels of the scandal, "This isn't a smoking gun, it's a mushroom cloud." Michaels is among those attacked in the purloined emails.

Olson, who helped me with the Hollywood end of my book, What's The Matter With California, is open-minded enough to enjoy the controversy. I cannot imagine he has much company in his part of the world.