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Mark,

Those particulates you mentioned--sulfur dioxide, mercury, nitrous oxide, and lead are already regulated (e.g. limited by ppm) by the Environmental Protection Agency.  The only pollutant that is unregulated and free of charge to industries and emitters in the United States is CO2.  It is presently the most dangerous pollutant because it is the fastest-rising human greenhouse gas (as well as the longest-lasting).  It is also the largest contributer to global warming.  Once CO2 is pumped into the Earth's atmosphere, it remains in the atmosphere for several hundred years.  What we've done is taken 350 million years of carbon vegetation and injected it all into the atmosphere in 200 years.  Whatever CO2 we've injected into the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial revolution is still there, and is accumulating prior to clearing naturally from the Earth's ecosystems, unlike the other dangerous air pollutants.  Human greenhouse gas emissions--primarily CO2 emissions--are very likely (over 90%) to be the cause of global warming according to the IPCC assessment from 2007.

I can summarize Crichton's basic premise in the Ken Wilber discussion that there is no proof of global warming in a few short sentences, all of which are deeply flawed:

1.  Scientists predicted global cooling, and they were wrong.

This is wrong because the majority scientific view has always been that the climate was slowly warming since first keeping accurate records of temperatures in the late 19th century. The trend has shown a slow and steady rise in average global temperature throughout the 20th century.  The rise of unregulated CFCs in the late 1960s and early 1970s produced a temporary cooling trend, which caused some scientists to speculate global cooling.  This was never conclusive among scientists (indeed, there were only a few peer-reviewed papers that ever made it to scientific journals on the global cooling theory throughout the 1970s).  Yet, in spite of the inconclusiveness of most scientists--who repeatedly called for more research and for more funding to determine one way or the other--news of "global cooling" reached the press and became exaggerated. 

A few irresponsible scientists and journalists released this "news" to the public upon becoming convinced that global cooling was actually happening in the 1970s.  They were speaking for themselves and their own conclusions; not for the scientific community which was inconclusive at the time.  These publicity stunts inspired the prophets of doom and a popular science nonfiction book written by a journalist called The Cooling, which predicted that the Earth was headed for a new ice age.  However, since "global cooling" was never the majority view held by climate scientists themselves (many who roundly criticized those "prophets of doom," continued to hold the mainstream view of global warming, or were otherwise demanding for more research), it is clear that Crichton misrepresented the facts to the public. 

2.  They were wrong because they relied on computer climate models, which are notoriously fallible.

Actually, computer models during the 1970s were reporting anomolies such as global warming, which contradicted the direct observations of scientists that the Earth was cooling.   It was not until the late '70s when Clean Air regulations went into effect that this discrepancy between real world data and computer models was resolved.  These regulations reduced the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere (which have a net cooling effect), but did nothing for the continued rise of unregulated C02 and other human greenhouse emissions (which have a net warming effect).  Thus, the warming resumed with a vengeance.

In addition, Crichton, like many from older generations, believed that climatologists rely solely on computer models for their predictions while ignoring other data.  He therefore ignored the vast body of evidence provided by real world data, such as proxy data (ice core samples, tree rings, and coral reefs--which provide accurate records of ancient climate) and real world data (sattelites, weather balloons, melting glaciers, ocean acidification, sea rise, melting Arctic ice, rising CO2, and so on--which provide increasingly moderate to very accurate records for present climate trends).  By the sound of Crichton's claims, you'd think that everything revolved around a computer model..

Furthermore, these computer model predictions have been fairly accurate nonetheless, although of late the rate of climate change has exceeded these computer model predictions.  This is largely due to positive feedbacks mechanisms which were previously not accounted for, but amplify heating effects from GHGs and are discussed in the two audios.  Thus, he's wrong again.

3.  Scientists still rely on unreliable computer climate models to predict climate, and then the narcissistic green environmentalists fall for these unreliable computer predictions (won't they ever learn?) to try to pass Kyoto and other bad policies, which could potentially devastate industries and poor people throughout the world.

The consequences of unmitigated global warming is likely to produce a tipping point, beyond which point the natural forces take over (i.e., methane release from permafrosts, dwindling sea ice) to produce a runaway greenhouse effect and sudden and catastrophic climate change.  Since those who are closer to the equator will be the first and hardest hit, it affects the poor the most.  In addition, a catastrophic climate change is very likely to ruin the world economically, trigger climate wars, crop failures, water shortages, and result in up to several hundred million to a billion or more climate change refugees migrating to northern latitudes.  

4.  The Bush administration was wrong most of the time, but at least their science was "right" on this one.

 Wrong on that one, too.  The reasons are self-evident such that no explanation is necessary.  The Bush administration suppressed scientific information for 8 years so there was no "science."  This was by far the most embarrassing fallacy that was committed in this audio.

5.  He says it's simply the green meme apocalypse story and they and their media and institutions have whipped themselves up into what he calls "a state of fear."  

On the one hand, Crichton is confusing (either deliberately or unwittingly) green environmentalism with orange climate science.  This is horrible. 

On the other hand, he's also confusing global cooling from the '70s with global warming.

He claims that legitimate orange science was degraded and politicized into a green mean meme.  He obviously is not in touch with the science itself.  To make such a grand and sweeping statement means you do not know the science, and have some ideological issues or other concerns unrelated to the science itself.

Personally, I've never self-identified with the "green" movment at all.  In fact, I've never felt compelled to recycle, save the wildlife, the polar bears, or any other animal until very recently.  I'm not an animal lover, not a nature lover and I've certainly never experienced a mystical oneness with nature (I'm allergic to mosquitos, scared of barking dogs, and hate the outdoors).  It was not until after watching Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth in 2007 and becoming acquainted with the actual science behind global warming and the consequences of unmitigated climate change when I finally became interested in this science.  So I resent being lumped into the same category of nature lovers.  He's from another time, obviously.  In fact, I think the Integral community has an issue with "MGM" and is lumping legitimate orange science into the category as well.

6.  Historic examples of this being the 70's fear that our soot was shading the earth and creating a man-made ice age

Please see number 1.  But in addition to those facts, every emerging scientific field goes through a maturation period lasting for several decades or more.  The role of CFCs was poorly understood by climate science in the late 1960s to the early 1970s, resulting in errors in interpretation of data, as would be expected in the earlier days when climate science was still an emerging science.  Nevertheless, even at the  time, most climatologists maintained that more research was needed to draw any conclusions throughout the 1970s for anythinig.  It was not until 1980s that a consensus was reached about the existence of global warming among climate scientists.  Apparently, both Ken and Crichton are applying unreasonable standards to this field and are using ancient history to "disprove" global warming.

7.  ...and pre-green cultures with their higher birthrates causing overpopulation and looming starvation.  

I've read that there was a fear of a "population explosion" during the 1970s.  What exactly does this have to do with global warming or climate science?  Except perhaps in an effort to cast doubts on legitimate science by throwing in every debunked scientific claim, green movement, Marxism, global cooling, along with the kitchen sink from the '60s and '70s to discredit global warming?  And then blame it on green environmentalism for their narcissistic me-ism alarmism?   This is disingeuous, unless they really believe in this crap.  I think they do (or did).

8.  He says (and I agree) that we should be focusing on things like pollution and health care, which we know is a problem now and worry about climate change if it become a certainty.

As Lester Brown says in the other audio discussion, it's all a packaged deal: it solving climate change can help to resolve the other issues, but resolving the other issues without solving climate change means that nothing will be done to solve anything.  All must all be done, but highest on the list of priorities is solving the climate crisis by reducing greenhouse gases.  Without a resolution to climate change, social systems are very likely to fall apart and disintegrate, including sanitation and health care.  Nation-states will begin to fail.  Solving climate change can help to resolve the other issues, but not vice-versa. 

I would highly recommend the following essay written by Spencer Weart for overview of the history of climate change debates, which covers public and scientific debates:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Public.htm#L000

an excerpt:

The change in press coverage was not due to any obvious change in the weather — the winter of 1978-79 was the coldest on record for the United States. Nor was there any single scientific revelation, for amid the complexities of geophysics, no individual finding could ever be decisive. But several research results published in the mid 1970s (perhaps especially from computer models) swayed the opinions of scientists. In early 1978 the New York Times reported that a poll of climate scientists found them evenly divided on whether there would be warming, cooling, or no particular change. But the balance among the handful of top experts had shifted strongly toward the likelihood of warming. In the scientific journals, where articles are published only after critical review by scientist peers, a few articles had appeared in the early 1970s that projected cooling in future centuries. These papers had always been outnumbered by articles that either predicted warming or said it was premature to make any prediction. After the mid 1970s, the papers predicting global warming predominated and became increasingly numerous. The views represented in the scientific literature migrated, with the usual exaggeration and simplification, to science journalists.(72a)