George Will wrote another deceptive global warming column. It's full of utter nonsense, retracts nothing, and pathetically tries to defend his previous errors:
The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged. The challenge is mistaken.
This I can only call a lie. A blatant one. Many of the column's incorrect factual assertions were challenged, and as Will is revisiting the column due to the response it has garnered, it's inconceivable that he doesn't know that. For God's sake, Will claimed that "according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade." That's false. And Will doesn't even address the issue at all in his latest column. Meanwhile, the Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt has made himself look terrible over all this. He should have held Will to the truth and thereby upheld his paper's standards. Instead he tells CJR this:
It may well be that he is drawing inferences from data that most scientists reject -- so, you know, fine, I welcome anyone to make that point. But don't make it by suggesting that George Will shouldn't be allowed to make the contrary point. Debate him.
There are many problems with this philosophy, but those are irrelevant, since George Will made factual errors rather than debatable inferences. Once again, he wrote that "according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade." There is no inference there. Will isn't saying he disagrees with the WMO's interpretation of the data, he's saying the WMO thinks there's been no recorded warming for more than a decade. The WMO doesn't think this. No serious scientific organization thinks this. It's a sad display from one of our great papers. The Post still has a lot of talented and hardworking writers; this is a slight to them all. In these difficult times, the paper ought to be striving to show it's still relevant. Instead, it shows us that at least at the editorial/oped page, they don't choose well between the truth on the one hand, and making such an eminence as George Will retract on the other. More from Carl Zimmer, Joe Romm, Media Matters, and many, many others.
