George Will lies like a rug

This phenomenon, where telling certain superficial, easy-to-detect, matter-of-fact lies (as well as engaging in other types of behavior which would be considered improper in regular circumstances) does not encumber the liar's ability to move in mass media circles and be perceived (or at least, presented) as a credible person, is rather interesting.

i think that Will s career in the science journalism sector is pretty much over. he has embarassed the Post and they will seriously double check, if they allow him to publish again on the topic.

but we have to learn a lesson as well. any attempt to contradict such articles must be even more focused on crucial points.

and we must not forget, that most people, surely not journalists and not even most scientist working on the topic, know as much about typical denialist talking points, as we do.

all of us have seen the "compare month x to month y" trick before. we know, that the right answer is a look at the trend.

the same is true about the "global cooling /imminent ice age scare". everyone who has been in this discussions before, knows, that NOT A SINGLE scientific article made the [ice age claim](http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/).
instead it was a phenomenon in newspaper headlines and "popular" science mags.

other people haven t seen those sources countless times. we must be patient and explain again, again and again...

here is the [link](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR20090…) to the original WP piece. just had to bring it up, no better explanation of how bad it is, than the original piece itself..

and another look at the interview:

Yeah. The odd thing about these people is, normally when I write something that people disagree with they write letters to the editor or they write a responding op-ed piece. These people simply set out to try and get my editors to not publish my columns.

well, at first they asked you to correct your piece. after that didn t work, this was an obvious approach..

Now I don't blame them, because I think if my arguments were as shaky as theirs are, I wouldn't want to engage in argument either.

yes. if only the scientific consensus on global warming was as solid as his opinion pieces. if only the real scientists did a background research, as detailed as he did. if only scientists did use his powerful statistic tools...

And that of course was a tiny portion of the column. (the sea ice extend claim..)

pretty major error, for a tiny part. having your source deny your claim must be some big embarassement?!?

Well, I think it is eroding, in the sense that people sign on to be alarmed because it's socially responsible ... (and because it makes them feel good). But once they get to the price tag, once they are asked to do something about it, like pay trillions of dollars, they begin to re-think.

multiple errors. again. neither will it cost trillions (a cost benefit analysis is needed here. somehow Will missed this..), nor does this discourage people.

But what it also always offers, whether it is global cooling or global warming, is a rationale for the government to radically increase its supervision of our life and our choices. Whether the globe is cooling, whether it's warming, the government's going to be the winner and the governing class will be the winner.

let us get this straight:

the US government desperately needed a global cooling scare i the 70s. all that communism and nuclear war stuff didn t scare people at all. remember the massive action, that governments took in the 70s, wasting our tax money to prevent an ice age?!?

oh and the same happened again over the last couple of years. remember the "Bush - global warming scare"?!? have you noticed, how all our money (again!) was spent, in defense against the warming planet, so that we couldn t afford to attack random countries after 9/11?

The climate was once warm enough for Greenland to be called "Greenland" for a reason -- the Vikings farmed there. There was a time when the planet was so cold that Eskimos landed in Scotland in their kayaks.

cycles? check!

"green"land? check?

eskimos in scotland? wow, that one is even new!

here were warm periods -- we've been through this before.

no. please give a source for this claim.

What's different now is that we have a media addicted to hysteria and we have enormous political and financial stakes in convincing people that vast shifts of power and resources should be given to the government to combat climate change.

Will is having trouble keeping his internal logic up, even over such a short interview.

somehow the "global cooling" hysteria in the media got lost, over his last two answers... it was exchanged for a completely different and NEW hysteria, that we have "now".

pretty good work Will. keep it coming!

Sod, I think you're wrong. George Will will continue publishing in much the same vein because if the Washington Post rejects his error riddled nonsense it will become a lightning rod for right-wing charges of censorship.

To contrarians and some on the political right, getting your scientific facts wrong is little more than an honest disagreement over differing scientific conclusions.

Uh oh. Just found my comments being removed from Keith Kloor's wonderful new blog.

Let me try and reconstruct them here.

Keith, your concern over ad hominem is, well....feigned. See your clever "thin gruel" jab at Steve Bloom for further understanding. Also, the continuous use of the word "tribe" (your witty take on RPJr's "your team") to describe people who disagree with RPJr's relentless attacks on credible scientists and climate science is equally banal.

If we belong to a tribe, it's the one that can't stand dishonesty, especially when it tries to cast itself as an "honest broker." The same tribe that dislikes individuals who claim respect for the First Amendment, and then ban people who skewer their muddled thinking.

That is one nauseating "interview", a bit like stumbling in on something sticky for two....Shorter Will: :"Apparently,I wrote something that upset some freaks,now let's talk about baseball."

That is one nauseating "interview", a bit like stumbling in on something sticky for two....Shorter Will: :"Apparently,I wrote something that upset some freaks,now let's talk about baseball."

nice catch.

i also thought that the interview got better, when they started on baseball. maybe, this is because i don t have the slightest clue of baseball. hey, perhaps i should write a column about it?

"the Pirates are as good NOW (TM), as they were 30 years ago".

(notice that "now" doesn t refer to any specific moment in time. i will feel free to adjust the meaning of that term, when ever i think it is necessary.)

@sod
re: the Inuit in Scotland (and West of Ireland). I guess it's possible, but definitely not proven. There are (iirc) 4 possible 12th-13th century Inuit harpoon points from Scotland, and a couple from Ireland, but mostly found on beaches. They could easily have been brought back by Vikings, or even have been carried over by wounded whales or walrus. There's also a report by Columbus of seeing two dead "Chinamen" in small boats off Western Ireland, and speculation that the Selkies (seal people) of Gaelic legend were lost kayakers (they couldn't return to the sea if you hid their shed seal-skin; possibly the splash-guard of the kayak?)

All-in-all about as firm a "fact" as the great Global Cooling Panic of the 70's. ;)

DaveH

Since George wears a rug, it's not surprising he lies under one.

"Seriously, I don't understand what there is to worry about." -- George Will

" ... don't criticize
What you can't understand"
-- Bob Dylan

But the GLOBAL EXTENT... was equaled to 1979 at the end of December 2008. CO2 is a trace gas that does NOT affect global warming due to equilibrium mechanisms. And we are historically at LOW PPM (parts per MILLION) of CO2. Plants thrive at double the current concentration of CO2. Do not curtail this time of CO2 prosperity... Plant Killers.

At #11...

Gawd, Tim "Radium Water" Curtin has mitosed.

Spare us.

Bernard J are you suggesting that increased CO2 produced more Tim Curtins? That's a worry.

Forgive me if this is posted elsewhere, but I believe the more egregious of the 2 Science quotes out of context has been overlooked.

Will originally wrote: ââ¦others anticipated "a full-blown 10,000-year ice age" involving "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation" (Science News, March 1, 1975, and Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976, respectively).

Although John Fleck addressed the first half of these 2 statements oh so dishonestly patched together, He missed the second which apparently comes from J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, N. J. Shackleton.

The full context of which reads:

â7) A model of future climate based on
the observed orbital-climate relationships,
but ignoring anthropogenic effects,
predicts that the long-term trend
over the next several thousand years is
toward extensive Northern Hemisphere
glaciation.â

For those with access:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/194/4270/1121.pdf

Funny that he left out âbut ignoring anthropogenic effects,â

Seinfeld's Kramer is proven right about George Will.

Lambert: "Bernard J are you suggesting that increased CO2 produced more Tim Curtins? That's a worry."

Ugh. Careful what you write. Mentioning his name may summon up the zombie of Tim Curtin.

Bernard J are you suggesting that increased CO2 produced more Tim Curtins? That's a worry.

a big worry.

but with additional CO2 increasing biomass, we finally have an explanation of the right being focused on Gore being fat...

"Gawd, Tim "Radium Water" Curtin has mitosed.

Spare us."

I genuinely took it as satire. The username, the bang-bang canard gun...

more like Will: [Where's global warming?
By Jeff Jacoby ](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/…)

my summary: we had a cold winter. global warming can t be real!

The appropriate named LarryDaLooza posts:

CO2 is a trace gas that does NOT affect global warming due to equilibrium mechanisms.

What "equilibrium mechanisms" would those be? And how do you explain the 76% of variance of temperature anomaly accounted for by ln CO2 from 1880 to 2007? Coincidence?

And we are historically at LOW PPM (parts per MILLION) of CO2.

CO2 is higher now than in the last 800,000 years or so. It is typically 180 ppmv in the depths of an ice age and 280 ppmv in interglacials. The level this year is 387 ppmv.

Plants thrive at double the current concentration of CO2.

Assuming all their other nutrients are provided and temperature, rainfall, etc. are appropriate. It's an interesting botanical curiosity but not really relevant to agriculture. Are you familiar with Liebig's Law of the Minimum?

Do not curtail this time of CO2 prosperity... Plant Killers.

If you don't want us to kill plants, what do you propose we eat? Bambi? You heartless fiend!

Thanks,Arch @#14. Will will never concede on this issue.It's not the accusation of manipulation or cherry-picking that haunts him; it's the scale and clarity of his incompetence. It's too confronting for him, hence the unreal tone of the interview.

The Pittsburgh Tribune, not the Chicago Tribune.

Thanks, I fixed it,

Jeff Jacoby is secretly hoping for warming because he's tired of being the only member of his tribe and hopes the great thaw will unfreeze more of his kindred.

CO2 is well known to be only available on earth as a solid, and is mainly used in the production of rear automobile windshields. It is not possible that rear auto windshields are interfering with Earth's cooling, because auto windshields are heavier than air and thus are found only at the surface.

Good old Pittsburgh Tribune...

from wikipedia -

"Richard Mellon Scaife... owns and publishes the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "
"Richard Scaife has consistently spent between $20 and $30 million per year to cover the Tribune-Review's losses."
"Scaife also owns 7.2% of NewsMax Media"

In the words of Philip Meyer, a newspaper's main product is not news or information, but influence.

This Jeff Jacoby?
http://www.prodos.com/archive021jeffjacoby.html
:D
Maybe George Will couldn't get any real journalist to touch him with a long pole.

[Will is a huge mook](http://forthesakeofscience.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/george-will-is-a-mo…). He's dumb and he doesn't understand science. He's also a liar.

Incidentally, I love your posts about John Lott (one of which I can't seem to comment on).

Richard Mellon Scaife is also famous for (at a public news conference) calling a Wall Street Journal reporter a "Communist cunt" and threatening her life. He exemplifies the true spirit of modern conservatism, I'd say.

WSJ reporters aren't smart enough to be commies!

Ugh. The entire George Will business is making me wish that the truth could sue for libel.

Can you picture George Will pouring through a Science article to extract a phrase?
mmm...
I sent a letter to the Post asking them to find out where Will gets his info from -- if not direct sources. (Having seen that wonk room listed Will as on Sen. Inhofe's email to send Morano's compilation of denial stuff to.)
Then Sen Kerry had an article in Huffington Post on Will's article. Then Morano left Inhofe's office.
Many members of Congress are on the 'nonprofit' denial industry. I spoke to one about the 'Interfaith Alliance Group' -- preaching the gospel according to ExxonMobil in church). I wish they'll do something about it.
If you are a nonprofit advocacy group (especially if advertising an industry point of view) should you be eligible for tax deductions? Or should you be allowed to conceal your donors (like Heartland)?
I'm fed up with these birds and their output. I ain't got another planet to move to.

Correction! (Ouch)
I meant to say members of Congress are ONTO --wise to -- the climate denying outfits. Not like Inhofe.
The member of Congress I spoke knew that the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance (including the late Falwell) had morphed to the Cornwell Alliance. Totally aware of the issue.