Washington Post to the Rescue
Some newspapers in America are really crappy. In The New York Times, for example, not only are the news pages always in hoc to to so-called “scientists” and their talk of “global warming” but even on the paper’s opinion pages conservative columnists like David Brooks and Ross Douthat never take on the “facts” and “science” that constitute “reality.” Thank God, then, for The Washington Post where their editors have no ethics or conscience and they’ve decided, out of contempt for their audience, that an appropriate use for their pages is to give George Will a forum in which to mislead the Post’s readers. Thus in today’s column he quotes noted climate scientist (and ethnic cleansing advocate) Mark Steyn “If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life.”
Here’s some nonsense chart I read in the NYT one time:
A bunch of good people work at the Post, but all things considered it continues to seem to me that the Washington Post Company would be well-advised to focus on its core competency in standardized test preparation services.
47 Responses to “Washington Post to the Rescue”
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July 23rd, 2009 at 10:53 am
Mark Steyn’s remarks are short sighted. He
should note that every evening temps drop
around 15-20 degrees. And stay that way until
the Sun comes up. “Where is your warming
there, Mr. Climate Harridan?”
Ocean temps are warmer now than they’ve ever
been measured, btw.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:05 am
Scathing…what will Ezra say??
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:12 am
By the way, I assume what they are referring to is the trend if you arbitrarily start with the recorded temperature spike in 1998: a person 29 in 2009 would have been 18 in 1998, hence the claim, “If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life.”
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
Exactly, DTM. No matter that 13 of the past 14 years are the hottest on record (I think that’s right). The hottest one happened to be in 1998, and thus over the past 11 years there’s NO GLOBAL WARMING! Why pass anything to regulate greenhouse gases?
That’s also an incredibly disingenuous way to argue your case. I was looking for the significance of the age 29 as it was obviously a massive clue for cherry picking but I missed the “adult life” part. I suppose that means that for anyone who’s not exactly 29, there has in fact been global warming in their adult life.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 am
The definition of a trend in statistics is movement of greater duration and extent than can explained by variability.
Steyn and Will are parading their ignorance.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:25 am
I see Matt has an update reflecting what Steyn/Will were doing.
By the way, that 1998 spike was apparently due to the unusually strong El Nino of 97/98.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:26 am
That particular choice is damning. It shows that they are aware of the data, and cherry picked their timeframe in order to be intentionally deceptive.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:27 am
You spelled “hock” wrong.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Lying is easy.
Anyone can make stuff up.
Lying effectively is harder.
What you make up should correspond with reality enough to make sense and accomplish whatever you were trying to do.
Oops.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:31 am
That particular choice is damning. It shows that they are aware of the data, and cherry picked their timeframe in order to be intentionally deceptive.
Knock me down with a feather.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 am
“in hoc to to [sic]“
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:47 am
Actually, here in DC the summer of 1980 was quite memorable as being one of the hottest on record – that one really was a “long hot summer”.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:54 am
Here’s part of an abstract from the American Meteorological Society Monthly Weather Review:
part of the “warming” issue, isn’t so much that summer’s have gotten hotter (summer is DC is often pretty brutal), but that winters have gotten quite milder.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:59 am
I’m glad George Will and Marc Steyn are there to speak up for those of us in our 20s, selflessly setting aside their own adult lifetimes which have seen warming of around 50 basis points on this graph. Would that previous generations had such guardians of liberty on their side!
Steyn, 1860: “If you’re 33, there have been no new slave states admitted to the union for your entire adult life. The expansion of slavery into the territories is not a problem.”
Steyn, 1929: “If you’re 54, there have been no economic depressions in your entire adult life. Economic downturns are not a problem.”
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Some newspapers in America are really crappy. In The New York Times, for example, not only are the news pages always in hoc to to so-called “scientists” and their talk of “global warming” but even on the paper’s opinion pages conservative columnists like David Brooks and Ross Douthat never take on the “facts” and “science” that constitute “reality.” Thank God, then, for The Washington Post where their editors have no ethics or conscience and they’ve decided, out of contempt for their audience, that an appropriate use for their pages is to give George Will a forum in which to mislead the Post’s readers.
Sarcasm fail.
The WaPo’s descent into conservative-tabloid-hood is just too disgusting to take lightly.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Seriously repugnant. This is an intellectual vice, so it doesn’t provoke the immediate disgust response you would get if Mark Steyn, say, ate the head of a bat. But intellectually, it’s the equivalent. Just disgusting.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Worse than eating bats, actually. You can derive nourishment from a bat.
Here’s another fun chart: average September arctic sea ice coverage, 1978-2008. Sea ice extent for 2009 is projected to be lower than 2008, and possibly worse than the record-breaking low of 2007.
But, hey, Al Gore’s fat so it can’t be true anyway.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I’m glad that at least you give the estimable, and brilliant, young Mr. Ross Douthat the credit of acknowledging that global warming exists. Too many liberals are apt to fall into the fallacy that all concervatives think alike.
TWB, I’ve tried eating bat meat before. The taste is worse than I can describe in words.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
That is a funny perspective on their part. I’m 37 and think that I’m in the youngest cohort that will have solid memories of the old climate.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Here’s a blog entry from Carl Zimmer, generally considered the best science writer around these days. The fact that George Will is a congenital liar, as well as being a pompous asshole, is of lesser note then the fact that Fred Hyatt allows him to get away with it.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/07/23/george-wills-crack-fact-checkers-continue-their-nap/
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Another interesting climate change expert choice: Sivlio Berlusconi??
Will’s only other quote is an errant comment by “vice premier” of China. Even if they might care less about emissions in the future, it’s easy to see why.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kyoto_Protocol_participation_map_2009.png
Look at that map and tell me who’s dragging their feet on this issue. Our lack of moral leadership is destructive.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
There’s another hilarious quote too from “India” – presumably an Indian official. He completely misses the point.
I wonder why India doesn’t take us seriously on this issue? Maybe hacks like George Will?
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I am a big admirer of Mr.Will’s writing. I think he is one of the best writers on either side of the political spectrum but he has no credibility when it comes to Global warming. He has been proven to twist facts to suit his thinking. he is certainly not open to the fact that Global warming is real. It is a shame that the Post and it’s editorial staff do not stop him from making this stuff up.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Leaving aside everything else, the fact that George Will, a ’serious, sensible columnist for one of America’s most respected newspapers’ would choose to quote Mark fucking Steyn to back up an article on – anything – just boggles my mind.
I mean, Mark Steyn? Really?
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
How about those denialists at Nature Geoscience who keep using science to disprove the accuracy of GW models. Don’t they know there is already an infallable consensus for the cause of GW?
http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2009/07/could-we-be-wrong-about-global-warming.html
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The relative merits of Mark Steyn notwithstanding, he’s not an advocate of ethnic cleansing, not even according the wholly fatuous reading that Andrew undertakes in the linked post.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I would just ride this out. Thanks to El Nino, 2009 is almost certain to be considerably warmer than 2008, so one year from now Will will likely be a major advocate for fighting climate change.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Woohoo, no global warming for me! Suck. on. that. all you 28 and 30 year olds. Class of 98, wooo!
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
TheF79 wins the thread. And I say this as an instructed-to-suck-on-that 28-year-old.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
“I wonder why India doesn’t take us seriously on this issue? Maybe hacks like George Will?”
The US produces twenty times the carbon per capita that the US does. What they are concerned about is being forced to lock in their current energy usage without being able to develop into a Western-style economy first. If we were asked to cut our emissions by 95% to meet India’s usage, I don’t think we’d do it either. What India wants is something closer to a worldwide per capita carbon standard that allows all economies to reach the same level. They don’t want to be stuck in the Third World forever. And they have a very valid point.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
“The US produces twenty times the carbon per capita that the US does”
Oops. Make that “The US produces twenty times the carbon per capita that India does.”
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I keep saying it. Left wing bloggers are all we got left. The fate of the world rests on the capable shoulders of you and your cohorts, young Matt.
Good luck and godspeed. You will need it. You’re the underdogs.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:46 pm
This is almost certainly untrue.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
And with regard to Steyn as an advocate of ethnic cleansing, he seems to be against it largely because it wouldn’t “accomplish much” and “would change America beyond recognition”, rather than because it would be wrong. The distinct impression I get from reading the linked-to material is that he seems to think that it’s a shame that, for its would-be perpetrators, ethnic/religious cleansing’s downsides outweigh its upsides.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Dave123,
I’m not sure where the denial community gets their idea that the idea of global warming rests on the assumption that there is nothing other than CO2 that affects the climate, and the moment anything else can be demonstrated to have an effect on climate global warming is disproven. Plenty of other forcings such as solar activity, orbital cycles, dust, ocean cycles, etc, are frequently discussed in the climate literature but none of the known forcings have played a major role in the warming trend of the last 30 years. That CO2 warms the atmosphere is not guessed from its historical correlation with temperature; it is a result of well understood physical properties of the gas that can be measured in a lab. The more serious of the denial scientists understand this and focus their efforts on speculating about negative feedbacks that might exist within the climate that would prevent CO2 output from having too big of an effect. Not, mind you, that any have bothered to develop a climate model based on their assumptions and show that their models are sensitive enough that things like ice ages or the temperature rise over the past century are possible but predict little further warming. That would be like work. Lindzen first proposed his adaptive iris idea over 15 years ago and still hasn’t come up with any evidence for it. And that’s about the closest thing anyone in the denial community is doing to science, all the rest is just PR.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Really disappointing to see how lame-assed Ezra Klein’s response is, when asked about it during his WaPo chat.
I mean, it’s one thing for George Will to lie. It’s another for Fred Hiatt to continue to let him lie. But it’s quite another for Ezra to buy into the WaPo line enough to where he doesn’t even acknowledge that George Will is lying. I mean, great fancy Moses! Ezra goes so far as to fellate Hiatt with “the Washington Post encourages a glorious diversity of opinion in its pages.” And he implicitly excuses Will’s lies saying that “Will is taken in by a lot of nonsense on this topic, and it’s sort of a shame.” No, Ezra, he’s not “taken in” by nonsense, he’s creating it and spreading it. Call a lie a lie. Christ, this is maddening.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
“TheF79 wins the thread. And I say this as an instructed-to-suck-on-that 28-year-old.”
I’m a university professor who does research related to climate change, and that seemed the most appropriate comment to leave, sadly. I mean, how else does one respond to arguments that a child could debunk?
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Models aren’t the end-all and be-all of AGW. There’s (for example) physics. The amount of energy trapped in the atmosphere due to the increase in CO2 and methane can be calculated. Strangely, it happens to be sufficient to account for the observed warming since the Industrial Revolution.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
1.
Mark Steyn doesn’t really advocate genocide, he does sometimes take a jocular tone in his writing. It’s what he does. Genocide (Sullivan’s term) and Ethnic Cleansing (Yglesias term) are serious accusations. All 3 writers should be more careful.
2.
The hottest year on record is now believed to be 1934. Yet, 1998 was a very warm year for air temperature.
The chart presented of “Average Global Temperature” is unsourced. Is this air or sea-surface, or deep ocean temp, or a combination? Measured at the airport or from a satellite?
The warm air temps of 1998 confuse a lot of people. The earth wasn’t really hotter that year, the atmosphere was hotter. The El Nino effect moves heat from the ocean to the air, raising air temps but also making it easier for heat to radiate away to space, resulting in more cooling of the earth.
There is no way the whole earth in 1998 could have really been that much warmer unless there was an increase in retained heat from the sun. There was no CO2 peak that year. Perhaps 1998 was more or less cloudy than other years? That could change retained heat. But the experts attribute the temperatures to El Nino, which mainly moves heat around.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
@fostert Will’s overall thrust is that we shouldn’t do anything because other countries are putting growth ahead of CO2 but we’ve been doing the same thing for years. Averting global warming requires everyone, not just India and China, to make economic sacrifices, and all rich nations could do more. For example, economic help to assist greener development for the poor nations; or more CO2 cutbacks from the rich to offset poor countries’ need to grow.
These are not self-interested actions in the short term, and getting everyone on board needs leadership. Our own sacrifice allows us to demand more for the rest of the world, both rich and poor. A global problem cannot be solved when the most powerful nation refuses to make any of its own concessions.
Meanwhile, George Will is encouraging the least co-operative nation to care even less, because he isn’t seeing enough hustle from the rest of the world.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Matt, you really ought to proof before posting. The last two words of your update should be “warming trend.”
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:10 pm
“For example, economic help to assist greener development for the poor nations; or more CO2 cutbacks from the rich to offset poor countries’ need to grow.”
I’m all for that, and so is India. What’s sad is that our media tries to simplify the situation to “India and China won’t cooperate.” That misses the entire point. India (can’t really speak for China) will cooperate as long as they are allowed to achieve a level of prosperity similar to that of the West. To do that, they will need financial assistance in developing greener technologies. But if we insist that India lock in their the carbon production without giving them any assistance, then India will not cooperate. I’ve spent months in India watching some very intelligent discussions on what global warming policy should look like. I can tell you this: one hour of discussion on Indian television has more intellectual content than a life time of discussions on CNN. Until we can actually discuss the merits of India’s concerns in an intellectual fashion, we will get nowhere. As for Will, he’s an idiot. We should do something, and that includes helping developing countries develop in a greener fashion. And the developing world provides us with the greatest opportunity for improvement. They have much less invested in carbon intensive energy systems. They have to build a lot of infrastructure anyway, so let’s help them make it green infrastructure. We are at a disadvantage because we have so much infrastructure already, and we want to make that infrastructure obsolete.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
You don’t quite understand. The models being used to account for carbon’s effect on the environment predicted that there should have been twice the carbon as there actually was. In other words, carbon is only contributing half of the warming that accepted climate models say carbon is and other factors are contributing more than models say they are.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Re: the Zeebe, Zachos & Dickens paper: I know that climate change denialists are excited about this study, but it indicates, as per previous work by the researchers, that PETM was in significant part driven by feedback effects.
You can look at this in two different ways: the first says, “Well, PETM happened when CO2 rose by only 70%, so obviously CO2 can’t have anything to do with global warming!” The second says, “PETM temperature increases happened when CO2 only rose by 70%! There were obviously unknown feedback effects that amplified the warming effects of the CO2.”
I fall into the second category, with the caveat that PETM took place in a very different world and thus can’t be used as a template for current events. I think it’s safe to say that Zeebe, Zachos and Dickens aren’t going to be happy seeing their work thrown around by climate change denialists. They’re not in paleoclimatology for the chicks, you know.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Dave123,
No, I reread the blog post you cited as well as the abstract here, and that is not what it says. What it says is that the models being used to account for carbon’s effect on the environment predicted only half as much warming as there actually was.
So that means there was something else adding to the warming, and that something else could either be 1) purely coincidental, let’s say unusual levels of solar activity that just happened to occur at the same time or 2) a currently unaccounted for feedback process, whereby the rise in temperatures triggered some other processes that further amplified it. In case 1, it is of no concern to current warming, other than we hope it doesn’t happen. In case 2, it means global warming could be worse than we think.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Poor Fred Will. He was such a good philosopher. Now there’s just George.
July 26th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias: I should say that at first I didn’t even understand what Steyn/Will were trying to say here. Clearly they’re engaged in some form of the “1998 was very hot and therefore there’s no global warming” fallacy, but 29 years ago it was 1980 — a distinctly cooler year than the ones we’ve had recently. The key here seems to be that if you’re 29 there’s been no warming in your “adult life.” In other words, 2000 was warmer on average than 2008 and therefore there’s no long-run cooling trend. [...]