Two corrections: the American Quaternary (not Quarternary) Association does not publish Eos, which is the house organ of the American Geophysical Union. AMQUA's letter ran in last week's issue, which is behind the firewall but has the same wording as the copy cited here.

This move by the AAPG is a great miscalculation, but I'm not surprised. The AAPG statement on climate change is not dated, but it refers to no literature later than 1999 and should have been reassessed long ago. (In fact its whole set of policy statements at http://dpa.aapg.org/gac/index.cfm is a Web Page That Sucks.) AAPG is a relatively insular group and might not be as sensitive to offending the community of scientists as the broader-based societies. But offend it did. The author of Jurassic Park surely deserves the award, but not the author of State of Fear. Since it can't back down from that embarrassment, the best thing AAPG could do right now is revisit its statement on climate change.

Mr. Leonard,

FYI, EOS is published by the American Geophysics Union. The American Quarternary Association is probably one of AGU's many affiliate organizations.

I read your column frequently and I have wondered whether you've had a chance to read EOS. I have received EOS since I became a member of AGU in 1998. What has been amazing has been watching the journal editors apparently decide, as of a couple of years ago, that enough was enough. The statements and articles have done less and less beating around the bush about climate change, in particular. I consider an indicator of how frustrated scientists have become with the current regime.

FWIW, membership in AGU costs $20 a year.

And the poster sessions at the AGU annual meeting in San Francisco are where curious minds wake up when they are in heaven. Imagine a giant room full of posters on everything from receding glaciers in the Andes, to new appraoches to streambank stabilization using willow branches to speculation about what kinds of creatures might be found on such and such planet.

Looking forward to seeing you on two wheels sometime. I ride an old silver Miyata.

-Ulysses

my eagerness to swipe at Crichton led to more dumb errors. i will fix anon.