Oil's Well that Ends Well

http://www.agu.org/fora/eos/2006/10/23/test-post-with-a-figure.htm

This page links to a .pdf file of an article from Eos, a journal published by the American Geophysical Union. This excerpt is from the "Forum" section, where letters to the editor and op-ed pieces are published, and we see here an example of a robust debate over Mr. Crichton and his geophysical and climatological bona fides. The first letter was issued by the Council of the American Quaternary Association (AMQUA), and it is made quite clear early on that the association has a bone to pick with our Main Man, and also with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), who had recently awarded Mr. Crichton their annual award for excellence in journalism. The selection of Mr. Crichton--a novelist without any evident training in either geology or journalism--constituted--in the opinion of AMQUA--an inappropriate endorsement of the blurring of the lines between fiction and fact, and between scientific explication and political advocacy. Tactically, AMQUA goes right after Crichton, and are clearly trying to make him out to be--scientifically speaking--kind of an infantile joke. They describe the novel as a cross between "Scooby Doo" and "The Lone Ranger," and observe--quite trenchantly, I think, that Crichton seems less concerned with understanding than with winning, and the "debates" in the book are structured accordingly. The letter cites hard studies and government websites, and its list of co-signatories is certainly impressive. They thereby position themselves as experts who know of what they write, and are ready to back up their claims.
After that letter, however, is where things get interesting.
There are two letters which take aim at the AMQUA piece, and at AMQUA itself, both written by people with a serious vested interest in the denial of so-called anthropogenic (sexy, sexy word, that) climate change. The first is by an emeritus professor from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville--hard to argue with that title--who seems to have founded something called the "Science & Environmental Policy Project." Sounds legitimate enough, and their website (sepp.org) has a friendly-looking, green and blue logo, so why not trust his word? Well, a little reading around on the site reveals that SEPP is clearly an industry-funded think tank whose stated goal is to advocate free-market solutions to environmental issues (i.e., provide scientific justification for the abolition of government regulations on industrial pollution, etc.).
The next letter is along the same lines--attacking the motives of AMQUA and trying to brand them as a political advocacy group for having voiced the majority view among geologists and climatologists--and it's by a man who identifies himself with "Sequoia Production, LLC." Sequoia--that sounds pretty green, right? I mean, isn't that a really pretty kind of tree? Well, it turns out it's also some kind of petroleum prospecting/extraction/something-or-other company. A quick googling turned up Sequoia's name on a list of clients of "New Tech Engineering Companies," which describes itself as "a group of individual companies providing services in the petroleum industry." So we have AMQUA--a professional association of scientists--up against a think tank and an oil industry service provider. Whom to trust?
(For the record, I'm with AMQUA--and not just because it's got the best acronym)