Wonk Room » A Suggested Correction For Will’s ‘Dark Green Doomsayers’ Column

A Suggested Correction For Will’s ‘Dark Green Doomsayers’ Column

By Brad Johnson on Feb 22nd, 2009 at 9:13 am

A Suggested Correction For Will’s ‘Dark Green Doomsayers’ Column

The following has been sent to Autumn Brewington, op-ed page editor for the Washington Post, Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, Alan Shearer, editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group, and Andy Alexander, Washington Post ombudsman.

To the editors of the Washington Post:

George F. Will’s column of February 15, 2009, “Dark Green Doomsayers,” contained certain factual inaccuracies despite the “multi-layered editing process” it underwent. Several bloggers have volunteered their time to fact-check Mr. Will’s column. Here is a suggested correction based on their work:

George Will’s Feb. 15, 2009 column ~~mischaracterized~~ vaguely characterized a statement by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu on the threat of catastrophic snowpack decline in California due to global warming. Chu was referring to an end-of-the century scenario, not a near-term threat.

Will’s column claimed that experts cited a 2008 decline in “global sea ice” as evidence of man-made global warming. Scientists cited the observed decline in Arctic, not global sea ice.

Will’s column claimed that the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center said that global sea ice levels are “now equal to those of 1979.” Although the ~~center~~ university said that global sea ice levels were “near or slightly lower than those of late 1979″ at the start of January, global sea ice levels are now eight percent below their levels in February 1979.

Will’s column claimed the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said “there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade.” According to the WMO, global warming is continuing, with the past decade the warmest on record.

Will’s column argued that imminent global cooling was a predicted planetary catastrophe in the 1970s. There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that imminent global cooling was a threat.

Will’s column cited articles from Science magazine and Science News to imply the authors expected an imminent ice age. The Science article instead predicted an ice age within several thousand years, “ignoring anthropogenic effects.” The Science News article described climatology as an “infant science” and discussed predictions of manmade global warming that have since proven to be accurate.

UPDATE: Will’s column misidentified the source of global sea ice data as the “University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center.” The actual source was a working group of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Atmospheric Sciences, informally known as the Polar Research Group.

The Washington Post and George Will regret the errors.

(HT: Progress Report, ClimateProgress, The Loom, TPM Muckraker, The Vine, Island of Doubt, and New Mexico Science)

Update Dr. Bill Chapman at the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center tells the Loom's Carl Zimmer that none of the Post's editors have ever contacted their scientists to fact-check Will's column:

After all this kerfuffule–involving a nationally syndicated columnist, the assistants to that columnist, the editors at the columnist’s syndication service, the editors at the Washington Post editorial page, and the Post’s ombudsman -- Chapman was refreshed that someone bothered to contact him about his research before writing about it. What a concept. For me, this whole affair has been about the value of fact-checking science, and Chapman's reply shows just how little checking was carried out by the Post and company.

Update Steve Benen writes:

The very first sentence of George Will's new column reads: "A simple apology would have sufficed." Oh, George, the irony is rich.

Update Will wrote: "Energy Secretary Steven Chu, an atomic physicist . . . ignores Gregg Easterbrook's 'Law of Doomsaying': Predict catastrophe no sooner than five years hence but no later than 10 years away, soon enough to terrify but distant enough that people will forget if you are wrong." As Will goes on to say that he believes Chu will be proven wrong "nine decades hence," it appears that he meant Chu fails to follow the Easterbrook guide for doomsaying, not that Chu was unaware of the Easterbrook guide for doomsaying. Under that interpretation, Will's language was confusing, not factually incorrect.

Comments
7

7 Responses to “A Suggested Correction For Will’s ‘Dark Green Doomsayers’ Column”

Gail Says:

Whether Chu meant a near term or distant threat, it seems like near term is more like it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/us/22mendota.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:39 am
Bill Says:

The George Will piece was unsupportable at many levels. For example, even if he had not misrepresented the 1970s hypotheses of some climate scientists, (a) they were different scientists, (b) today’s scientists have much more extensive data and an explanatory mechanism that is consistent both with the data and the underlying physics, (c) there is a consensus among the world’s scientists about global warming, (d) he ignores other harms produced by emissions (e.g., acidification of the oceans, growing dead zones, etc.), (e) he fails to consider risks: if the scientific consensus is right and we take precautionary action we avert a world-wide disaster, while if the consensus is wrong and we take precautionary action, we end up with a cleaner, healthier environment. Even on its own terms, Will’s reasoning is absurd: scientists in the past had a different view, therefore scientists today are wrong or, alternatively, scientists of the past erred, therefore scientists today are in error. Sorry, that’s not the way learning works. It’s a shame, Will is more committed to battling government action than to protecting the world from unpriced externalities of the world’s industries.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Val Says:

if the scientific consensus is right and we take precautionary action we avert a world-wide disaster, while if the consensus is wrong and we take precautionary action, we end up with a cleaner, healthier environment.

You make it sound like “precautionary action” has no adverse consequences, yet it does, both to the environment (goodbye rainforests, we need ethanol) and the human population of today (food shortages/rising costs also due to the ethanol farce, cap & trade/carbon tax scams where the elite trade the right to live more luxuriously by decreasing the standard of living for the poor and the middle class, the current disaster in Chad because of charcoal being banned, skyrocketing energy costs, and who knows what forms of misery they will force upon us next in the name of saving the planet in some distant potential future).
I’m not saying there are no policies which could indeed have benefits either way, but obviously the ones which are most likely to be adopted are those which are most attractive to the affluent, regardless of the impact on “the little people,” so I do not believe this is such a win-win situation at all for the majority of people.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:54 am
Zog Says:

Ah, there’s nothing more pleasing to my ear than the frustrated squeals of warmists forced to confront reality and truth. How about a Nobel Peace Prize for George Will? Go get ‘em George.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
mommycalled Says:

Exactly what reality and truth are your talking about Zog? I guess you are having trouble understanding the doucmentation above where George Will misquotes, lies and otherwise makes a fool of himself. The squeals you hear are the squeals of deniers as their ox get GOREd
February 24th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
abc Says:

Those that speak do not know, while those that know do not speak. It is the persistent problem of formulating good science policy in a democracy. Shame on George Will for hurting our country!
February 24th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Walter Long Says:

go george…..too bad your article was a few days early……maybe these delusionals can explain 193,000sq.miles of arctic ice they failed to account for…..pursuit of knowledge not politics……prove your claims!!!!!!!!
February 25th, 2009 at 12:27 pm