I have hitherto taken "factual" suggestions by George Will pretty much at face value. I am afraid that that is something which, at least on some subjects, cannot be done any longer. Witness Mr. Will's Sunday piece in the Washington Post, Dark Green Doomsayers.
This has been critiqued thoroughly by Talking Points Memo and Nate Silver, so if you don't like me you can read the critiques there instead.
Lets just start with the "global cooling" scare of the 1970's shall we?
In the 1970s, "a major cooling of the planet" was "widely considered inevitable" because it was "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950" (New York Times, May 21, 1975). Although some disputed that the "cooling trend" could result in "a return to another ice age" (the Times, Sept. 14, 1975), 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).
Ok. Those first two articles were by the late, great Walter Sullivan of the New York Times. Here is the title of the first: "Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead; Scientists Ponder Why World's Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable". So far so good. But here is the first sentence.
The world's climate is changing. Of that scientists are firmly convinced. But in what direction and why are subjects of deepening debate.
That doesn't sound so promising. Kind of sounds as if the article is about a debate between global cooling and warming, doesn't it? How about the 2nd?
Title: "Climatic Changes by Aerosols in Atmosphere Feared" First sentence:
Although attention in the debate regarding the role of fluorocarbon aerosol sprays has hitherto focused on public health questions, it has now been proposed that they could alter world climates.
Again this does not sound like it is an article that wants to necessarily sound the global cooling alarm. At the time there was a debate as to whether fluorocarbon aerosols might deflect heat from the sun, thus the "global cooling" angle. To the best of my knowledge, even Mr. Will would acknowledge that no one thinks that now. I, could, considering how this is going, be wrong in that presumption. I won't delve further on these because I don't have Lexis-Nexis nor I am dishing out the money for access to the archive copies. I have to accept on faith that the articles were accurately quoted (They did pull on the search terms, so a fairly safe presumption.) Suffice to say, that, as a good journalism piece should, it appears that Mr. Sullivan was trying to present two sides to a debate about specific climate topics in his articles. Now, Mr. Will has chosen to use them as examples of a "global cooling" crisis three decades later. Hmmm.
(Needless to say, Mr. Sullivan might, in the interest of journalism, use some quotes from the wonderfully misguided people at ICECAP if he were to write an article about a similar subject today. Does that mean that 30 years down the line some conservative columnist would dredge up those ICECAP quotes from Joe D'Aleo and John Coleman as proof of a "global cooling" fad? I wonder.)
But wait, there's still more from that one little excerpt! Nate has a professor who wrote in about the Science article quoted which was apparently entitled "Variations in the Earth's orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages" (Again, as with Will, I am going on faith here since I don't have the resources to access all of this stuff). Here's part of his note to Nate starting with a quote from the article:
"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."
Isn't it odd how Will left out the phrase "ignoring anthropogenic effects"? A non-Republican might interpret that phrase to mean that even way back in 1976, the authors of the article considered it possible that anthropogenic warming could potentially be strong enough to stave off an entire Ice Age.
Nate follows with this:
I would add that in addition to ignoring the article's caveat about anthropogenic [man-made] effects, Will also failed to disclose that the article was describing long-term trends "over the next several thousand years". To the extent there were concerns about global cooling in the 1970s, they were about relatively near-term effects stemming from man-made particle pollutants -- quite different from what the Science article was talking about.
In an earlier post Nate also did a good job debunking the idea of global cooling in general.
But wait TPM has more! We move on to this little tidbit:
According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.
Well, TPM points out that UofI responded with this:
In an opinion piece by George Will published on February 15, 2009 in the Washington Post, George Will states "According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979."
We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.
It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.
Oops! There is also more debunking, on the TPM post, of the idea that there has been "no recorded global warming for more than a decade." I encourage you to click through and read it.
It still baffles me why it is so paramount to 'disprove' global warming to the right. Even when they do admit it exists, it certainly cannot be caused by the millions of tons of particulates and gases we have spewed into the atmosphere in recent times. Just the natural cycle. While that is not the point of this post, understanding the reasoning might help explain why this happened.
George Will got sloppy trying to put up a article to defend his position on climate change. That is not like him. This was a pretty short column and he has lots of problems in it. Factual problems. Presentation problems. It is weird. He, and his staff, don't usually leave themselves open like this.
Some are complaining that the Washington Post should've fact checked it. Balderdash. It's an opinion piece. But it does have to make them wonder in the future. You aren't allowed to make arguments stated as fact to support your opinion out of whole cloth either. You can still have the opinion, just don't print these things as fact when they are not. This isn't the Rush Limbaugh Show after all.
Here's hoping George Will comes to his senses. He could have made this argument in a more intellectually honest way I think. Perhaps he got caught up in the idea that the "global cooling" crisis got just as much hype in the 70's as warming does now and, failing to find any real evidence for that premise, started cherry picking stuff? I don't know. It's weird. C'mon George! I don't usually agree with you. But please, don't do this again. I don't want to lose my respect for you.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
