Posted by
Average Voter on Saturday, February 28, 2009 11:01:10 AM
George Will wrote an article a fews days ago that sparked quite a uproar among some on the global warming side. The arguement seemed to revolve around a statement he made about sea ice levels, and whether they match 1979 levels.
As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.
It didn't take ling for the global warming nutters to start thowing darts at Mr.Will. Climate progress came out with an article personally assaulting George Will, calling him (and other conservative writers, just for good measure) names.
I know what you’re thinking — George Will isn’t even the most ignorant columnist in the Washington Post (see Krauthammer’s strange denier talk points, Part 1: Newton’s laws were “overthrown” and Part 2). And of course John Tierney is easily the worst science writer (see here). And take Gregg Easterbrook … please! (see here).
The New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin put out
an article showing how both Will and Gore made statements that were less than honest.
Earlier this month, former Vice President Al Gore and the Washington Post columnist George Will made strong public statements about global warning — from starkly divergent viewpoints.
Mr. Gore, addressing a hall filled with scientists in Chicago, showed a slide that illustrated a sharp spike in fires, floods and other calamities around the world and warned the audience that global warming “is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented.”
Mr. Will, in a column attacking what he said were exaggerated claims about global warming’s risks, chided climate scientists for predicting an ice age three decades ago and asserted that a pause in warming in recent years and the recent expansion of polar sea ice undermined visions of calamity ahead.
Both men, experts said afterward, were guilty of inaccuracies and overstatements.
Mr. Gore removed the slide from his presentation after the Belgian research group that assembled the disaster data said he had misrepresented what was driving the upward trend. The group said a host of factors contributed to the trend, with climate change possibly being one of them. A spokeswoman for Mr. Gore said he planned to switch to using data on disasters compiled by insurance companies.
Mr. Will, peppered with complaints from scientists and environmental groups who claimed the column was riddled with errors, has yet to respond. The Post’s ombudsman said Mr. Will’s column had been carefully fact-checked. But the scientists whose research on ice formed the basis for Mr. Will’s statements said their data showed the area of the ice shrinking, not expanding.
Gore removed his slide, admitting as much that he "misrepresented" the information. George Will on the other hand
wrote a response backing up is claims.
Reporter Andrew Revkin's story was headlined: "In Debate on Climate Change, Exaggeration Is a Common Pitfall." Regarding exaggeration, the Times knows whereof it speaks, especially when it revisits, if it ever does, its reporting on the global cooling scare of the 1970s, and its reporting and editorializing -- sometimes a distinction without a difference -- concerning today's climate controversies.
Which returns us to Revkin. In a story ostensibly about journalism, he simply asserts -- how does he know this? -- that the last decade, which passed without warming, was just "a pause in warming." His attempt to contact this writer was an e-mail sent at 5:47 p.m., a few hours before the Times began printing his story, which was not so time-sensitive -- it concerned controversies already many days running -- that it had to appear the next day. But Revkin reported that "experts said" this columnist's intervention in the climate debate was "riddled with" inaccuracies. Revkin's supposed experts might exist and might have expertise but they do not have names that Revkin wished to divulge.
As for the anonymous scientists' unspecified claims about the column's supposedly myriad inaccuracies: The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged. The challenge is mistaken.
Citing data from the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, as interpreted on Jan. 1 by Daily Tech, a technology and science news blog, the column said that since September "the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began." According to the center, global sea ice levels at the end of 2008 were "near or slightly lower than" those of 1979. The center generally does not make its statistics available, but in a Jan. 12 statement the center confirmed that global sea ice levels were within a difference of less than 3 percent of the 1980 level.
But it doesn't end there. The Washington Post's ombudsman wrote a piece today questioning the editing and fact checking process at the Post.
As the debate continues, questions linger about The Post's editing process. And there are separate questions about how The Post reacted once readers began questioning the accuracy of Will's column.
The editors who checked the Arctic Research Climate Center Web site believe it did not, on balance, run counter to Will's assertion that global sea ice levels "now equal those of 1979." I reviewed the same Web citation and reached a different conclusion.
It said that while global sea ice areas are "near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979," sea ice area in the Northern Hemisphere is "almost one million sq. km below" the levels of late 1979. That's roughly the size of Texas and California combined. In my mind, it should have triggered a call for clarification to the center.
One thing he wrote is clear:
There is a disturbing if-you-don't-agree-with-me-you're-an-idiot tone to much of the global warming debate. Thoughtful discourse is noticeably absent in the current dispute. But that's where The Post could have helped, and can in the future.
On its news pages, it can recommit to reporting on climate change that is authoritative and deep. On the editorial pages, it can present a mix of respected and informed viewpoints. And online, it can encourage dialogue that is robust, even if it becomes bellicose.
So who has the correct information? Who is telling the truth? I believe it is somewhere in between.
It seems to me, though, that there is a major issue being overlooked here.
Did everyone miss the fact that Al Gore was diliberatly feeding misinformation? Mr. Gore was using information that was clearly wrong and he admitted as much by removing the slide from his presentation. But it was treated as if it was a non-issue.
So, does AL Gore get a pass here? How many times has he used this information to make a arguement for the ravages of global warming? And this has been an
on going problem for years with him, even with those he shares a Nobel Peace Prize with.
But Al Gore's carbon offset shuffle is small potatoes, as it were. His great accomplishment is to have shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the thousands of scientists of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- while contradicting their scientific findings. (See Danish climate expert Bjorn Lomborg's wonderful article in The Boston Globe last week for more details.)
For example, Gore warned the world in his Academy Award-winning movie to expect the world's sea level to rise 20 feet this century. His co-award winners said about 1 foot -- the same increase in sea level experienced during the past 150 years. So much for the Eastern Seaboard being underwater.
Gore also warned that the world is endangered by the fast melting of Greenland's glaciers, while his co-award winners (the scientists) concluded that if sustained, the melt would add -- at most -- just 3 inches to sea level. I guess we'll still have Miami and London despite an inconvenient truth.
We can all argue about who is the smartest when it comes to climate change, but only the global warming nutters get a fact checking pass in the main-stream-media.