WaPost’s Continuing Contempt for Its Readers
George Will writes:
The “difficulty” — the “intricate challenge,” the Times says — is “building momentum” for carbon reduction “when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.” That was in the Times’s first paragraph.
He manages, however, to not tell us what the third paragraph of the Times story says:
Scientists say the pattern of the last decade — after a precipitous rise in average global temperatures in the 1990s — is a result of cyclical variations in ocean conditions and has no bearing on the long-term warming effects of greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere.
We’re long past the point at which it makes sense to complain about George Will. But one is once again left with the profound crisis facing the employees of the Washington Post. Simply put, they all work for an institution that seems utterly indifferent to whether the people who write for the paper are informing the readers or deliberately trying to mislead them. That hurts their credibility, each and every one of them. It also means that whenever any of them do good work, they raise the prestige and credibility of an organization that dedicates a substantial quality of valuable real estate to deliberate efforts to mislead the public about the single most important issue of our time. It’s a very serious problem.
The fourth graf of the Times story, also not mentioned by Will, says:
But trying to communicate such scientific nuances to the public — and to policy makers — can be frustrating, they say.
My guess is that it would be a lot less frustrating if major newspapers tried to convey accurate information rather than, Post-style, deliberately trying to portray the data in a misleading manner.
82 Responses to “WaPost’s Continuing Contempt for Its Readers”
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October 2nd, 2009 at 8:55 am
Good stuff. Keep it up.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:58 am
Why bother to have an op-ed page? Save money and dump it.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:05 am
sesli chat sesli sohbet
gazzee
americada deprem
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:09 am
And then there’s the little matter of Anne Applebaum, coming up with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) lies to defend the proposition that it’s “outrageous” to arrest someone who raped a 13-year old and then fled the jurisdiction…
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:13 am
The first time I read a Will column, many years ago, was because I misread the byline. I though it was Gary Wills. Before I realized my mistake I was going ‘this is just assertion, no research, the argument is sloppy, did Wills get Alzheimer’s or something?’ Will hasn’t improved with age.
I believe that when Obama had dinner with the neocons at Will’s home, there was mention of it being a 16M$ home. George Will is making a ton of money, quite likely some of it directly from energy lobbyists. By being controversial, he draws a larger audience and brings money into WAPO. Will has his priorities and is doing exactly what he plans to do. Neither he nor Fred Hiatt nor Katharine Graham give a flying… about truth, much less what a bunch of DFHs like us think of them.
By calling out his lies, we’re adding to his notoriety and helping him. But what else can one do? Unless someone can figure out how to follow the money.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:13 am
Sometimes I think the worst thing that can happen to a publication’s readers is for a journalist in their employ to win a Pulitzer. Safire, Will, Gigot, Krauthammer, Dowd and Broder all have won since 1970. Look at that list. A veritable cesspool of disingenuous hacks and Republican sycophants, all bestowed with a stamp of approval via winning a Pulitzer. Prize in hand they dig in for life, writing the sort of crap Will scratches out between sailing excursions and dinner parties in the Hamptons. You know, staying in touch with the masses and all……..
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:37 am
Leave us not forget that this is the same George Will who dumped his first wife in order to trade her in for a younger model.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
The same goes for ABC. They give Will an open mic every week on Steph’s little GOP talking points show.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:54 am
The fact that scientists say that ‘cyclical variations in ocean currents’ are the reason warming is not continuing is HUGE. Because it means that all of the models that don’t have the PDO as part of their prediction algorithm are garbage. And that includes Hansen’s oft-cited IPCC models.
I mean, if someone said that they had a model that predicted the outcome of American football games, and then you discovered that, years later, when their predictions continued to fail, that they had forgotten to include field goals as part of the scoring algorithm, you would say “Wow, that prediction model is seriously flawed, and can’t be relied upon.”
We should not be making large scale policy decisions based on predictive models that are so misaligned with real-world physics. A Pigovian carbon tax has the benefits of being minimally disruptive, easy to tweak and does not provide ways for corporations to siphon money from taxpayers via the clever application of well-paid lobbyists and corrupt politicians (I’m looking at you, Cap and Trade!).
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:05 am
Where “convey accurate information” translates to “agrees with my worldview”.
As I’ve said before, the house bill is a political document, not a solution. If this is as much of a crisis as you clearly believe it is. why put off any action until 2013? It’s almost as if the Democrats understand that large increases in energy prices in the midst of a recession would do political damage to them, and to Obama’s 2012 campaign.
But if you think this is a crisis, then none of that should matter. The fact that it does matter tells me that most of the people pushing for this don’t take AGW any more seriously than I do.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 am
If this is as much of a crisis as you clearly believe it is. why put off any action until 2013?
Because a sizable portion of the Democratic caucus, and pretty much the entire Republican caucus, are either corporate whores, or represent districts/states where coal is a huge industry and value their constituents over the nation in general, or both. Thus any bill has to be watered down in such a manner to stand any chance of passing.
But I do love your logic that because there aren’t 218 Reps and 60 Democratic Senators who take AGW sufficiently seriously (every such Republican long having been Club for Growth’d), clearly it can’t possibly be a major issue, and therefore it’s better to do nothing than to do the half-assed fix that can actually be passed.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 am
My guess is that it would be a lot less frustrating if major newspapers tried to convey accurate information rather than, Post-style, deliberately trying to portray the data in a misleading manner.
Everbody thinks they’re Bob Somerby these days.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:13 am
if by “contempt” you mean presenting them with a contrarian point of view, then you’re absolutely correct. they should just do what the NYTimes does and assume that all their readers are fairly left of center and present very little content that deviates from that world view.
why let a little something like the validity of present climate models get in the way of something we already know is true? it’s science after all. how does that they mihgt be giants song go again?
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 am
Maybe the trolls here can try to explain why this man, head of the 3rd largest utility in the US, and in charge of 17 power plants, says every one of them eventually has to be shut down:
http://vodpod.com/watch/1569234-one-minute-on-60-minutes
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:19 am
Well, if not shut down, completely modified for carbon sequestration.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:21 am
i especially like the way that j r doesn’t seem to understand keynes’ dictum that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts!
which is more or less fred hiatt’s problem: not only does he think the way that most of his moron op-ed writers think, he believes that “opinion” columns by definition can’t be fact-checked anyhow.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:24 am
i guess expressing a dissimilar opinion makes one a troll. sure, why not? that sound reasonable.
i’ve expressed no opinion about climate change. in truth i’m agnostic. i’m skeptical, but if most scientiest say it’s an issue i’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. it’s the politicians i don’t trust.
as for your question, jj, do you really have to ask why a CEO might support a bill that gives his company millions of dollars in subsidies? i’d like to think that matt’s readers are a bit more sophisticated than that.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
You’re a retard, and your keyboard has a shift key.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
jr: Millions in subsidies *right now,* but a very bleak future for his largest source of energy–coal.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:29 am
you’d be surprised what i understand. by the way, i like the exclamation point at the end. faux indignation is a great rhetorical device. but here’s the thing… there’s no such thing as a “fact” about the future. predictions are predictions. facts are things which are verifiable. the future hasn’t happened yet, so we have no ability to verify it. even something as benign as “the sun will come up tomorrow” cannot rightly be called a fact. it may be so highly probably as to effectively rule out all other possibilities, but it is still not a fact.
ps – that wasn’t keynes. daniel patrick moynihan said that.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:31 am
The things he’s been doing would make no business sense if the basic facts of climate change weren’t so clear.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:36 am
there’s no such thing as a “fact” about the future.
Be a pedant. Fine. I tried to have a philosophical conversation about Xeno’s paradox with my wife as we were in traffic, that she didn’t have to worry about keeping her eyes on the traffic in front of her because she’d never run into the bumper in front of her. I married someone with common sense though, and I was ignored.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:39 am
@jj,
so, you have a guy who’s company faces millions of dollars in future expenses, to do things like equip his plants for carbon sequestration, throwing support behind a plan that would give him tax payer money to help cover those expenses, and you don’t see the possibility of other motives at work?
interesting… you guys should so you yourself a favor. open up the google and look up a few things. start with “fact”, then try “political economy”, next take a gander at “iron triangle”. once you’ve digested all of those, come on back and we can start our next lesson.
ps to dave – actually my computer does not have a shift key, but thanks for rubbing it in
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:49 am
This is making me not want to submit a 400-word column to their Be On the WashPo Op-Ed Page contest.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:52 am
Well speaking of political economy, jr, just what is the “reality based community” supposed to do against the externality-ignoring God Pod and the revanchist Republican machine that we’ve had over the past eight years?
And believe me, plenty of people have been studying the facts.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:54 am
We’re long past the point at which it makes sense to complain about George Will.
We won’t be past that point until nobody who matters pays attention to what Will has to say anymore.
As atrocious as he is – and IMHO, he’s the worst columnist on the WaPo op-ed page, which is impressive, when you consider the competition – he’s a brand name, and consequently (and unfortunately), people listen to what he says, simply because he says it.
In this regard, he’s very different from Richard Cohen, Robert J. Samuelson, or Anne Applebaum. Sure, somebody is reading them, but nobody thinks they hung the moon.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
if thinking that i’m one of george bush’s foot soldiers makes you feel better about ignoring the logic of what i’m saying, fine; but again, my argument has very little to do with the debate over climate change. i am smart enough to know what i can and cannot reasonably speak on. you should give that a try.
my point is simply that if matt continues to bash george will for misrepresenting facts and not someone like ej dionne, then he is being a hypocrite. that’s it. short and sweet.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:00 am
By the way, jr, my favorite thinkers lately on political economy have been Sam Tanenhaus and Mike Lind.
Check them both out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCWO-LSszZI
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:03 am
I don’t know what you’re talking about, JR. And equating Dionne and George Will in this context–where Will is flat out deceiving, and not for the first time–tells me that it’s not much worth finding out what you’re talking about.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 am
look bud, if you want to ignore everyone who expresses a different opinion than you’re own, that’s your right. just try not to be so self-congratulatory about your own intolerance.
i regularly read dionne’s column, as well as will’s, and almost all of them leave me with the sense that what dionne has written is either purposefully deceptive or so partisan as to be useless as journalism. if you were not so completely wedded to your own ideological point of view, you would see that as well.
personally, i have no use for the red team-blue team games. if i want to root for a team i turn on the yankee game. when it comes to public policy i approach every argument on its merits, not based on what side of the aisle it’s coming from.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:35 am
Practically everthing written by Yglesias is misleading and he still has a job.
56% of the public refuse to pay anything to stop the non-warming and only 21% will agree to pay $100 a year. And that’s with constant one-side hysteria from the media. That sounds like a big time 77% GO TO HELL to me. The public has caught on the HOAX.
1 Temperatures have been cooling since 2002, even as carbon dioxide has continued to rise.
2 Carbon dioxide is a trace gas and by itself will produce little warming. Also, as CO2 increases, the incremental warming is less, as the effect is logarithmic so the more CO2, the less warming it produces.
3 CO2 has been totally uncorrelated with temperature over the last decade, and significantly negative since 2002.
4 CO2 is not a pollutant, but a naturally occurring gas. Together with chlorophyll and sunlight, it is an essential ingredient in photosynthesis and is, accordingly, plant food.
5 Reconstruction of paleoclimatological CO2 concentrations demonstrates that carbon dioxide concentration today is near its lowest level since the Cambrian Era some 550 million years ago, when there was almost 20 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is today without causing a “runaway greenhouse effect.”
6 Temperature changes lead, not lag, CO2 changes on all time scales. The oceans may play a key role, emitting carbon dioxide when they warm as carbonated beverages lose fizz as they warm and absorbing it as they cool.
7 Most of the warming in the climate models comes from the assumption that water vapor and precipitation increase as temperatures warm, a strong positive feedback. Water vapor is a far more important greenhouse gas than CO2. However, that assumption has been shown in observations and peerreviewed research to be wrong, and in fact water vapor and precipitation act as a negative feedback that reduces any small greenhouse warming from carbon dioxide.
8 Indeed, greenhouse models show the warming should be greatest at mid to high atmosphere levels in the tropics. But balloon and satellite observations show cooling there. The greenhouse signature or DNA does not match reality, and the greenhouse models thus must greatly overstate the warming – and in a court of law would have to be acquitted of any role in global warming
9 The sun has both direct and indirect effects on our climate. Solar activity changes on cycles of 11 years and longer. When the sun is more active it is brighter and a little hotter. More important though are the indirect effects. Ultraviolet radiation increases much more than the brightness and causes increased ozone production, which generates heat in the high atmosphere that works its way down, affecting the weather. Also, an active sun diffuses cosmic rays, which play an important role in nucleation of low clouds, resulting in fewer clouds. In all these ways the sun warms the planet more when it is active. An active sun in the 1930s and again near the end of the last century helped produce the observed warming periods. The current solar cycle is the longest in over 100 years, an unmistakable sign of a cooling sun that historical patterns suggest will stay so for decades.
10 The multidecadal cycles in the ocean correlate extremely well with the solar cycles and global temperatures. These are 60 to 70 year cycles that relate to natural variations in the largescale circulations. Warm oceans correlate with warm global temperatures. The Pacific started cooling in the late 1990s and it accelerated in the last year, and the Atlantic has cooled from its peak in 2004. This supports the observed global land temperature cooling, which is strongly correlated with ocean heat content. Newly deployed N.O.A.A. buoys confirm global ocean cooling.
11 Warmer ocean cycles are periods with diminished Arctic ice cover. When the oceans were warm in the 1930s to the 1950s, Arctic ice diminished and Greenland warmed. The recent ocean warming, especially in the 1980s to the early 2000s, is similar to what took place 70 years ago and the Arctic ice has reacted much the same way, with diminished summer ice extent.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am
Bob Roddis neglected to remind us Jesus rode a dinosaur to work every day.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:41 am
Whatever, jr. I don’t read Dionne much. I’m more of a Krugman fan.
But I think I know what you’re saying, jr. You don’t like technocrats. But keep this in mind: Patrick Moynahan’s Great Society *social* science technocrats and *physical* scientists, climate scientists–are very different people. The older arguments don’t necessarily have relevance. You can just superimpose older arguments, with their older dogmas, that may have worked in another time, over new situations.
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:43 am
Sorry, should be, you *can’t* just superimpose older arguments…
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
jj,
i agree with you up to a point. if a legitimate case has been made that greenhouse gas emissions have a negative externality, i am more than willing to be taxed for it. what i oppose is the sort of big governemnt-big coporation boondoggle that we are likely to end up with.
what’s more, if the climate science is rigorous enough, then it shouldn’t matter what george will says. it is just really disturbing to hear someone who calls themself a progressive basically saying that dissenting opinions should be driven out of the marketplace.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 pm
JR, You’re assuming that Will is just giving us a “dissenting opinion.” He’s doing that, but in the process he’s distorting the climate science, with obvious deliberation. That’s the basic point of the post. No amount of pedantry you present us with changes that. “You’re entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts,” applies very well here.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 pm
AGW is a liberal BS story to grab more power and more money. Bob posted more facts that everyone of the daily posters combined have. MY and the rest post BS everyday and don’t seem to be threatened with dismissal
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
i guess expressing a dissimilar opinion makes one a troll.
No, but continuing to indulge in this kind of dishonest debate does.
Jackass.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
my point is simply that if matt continues to bash george will for misrepresenting facts and not someone like ej dionne, then he is being a hypocrite. that’s it. short and sweet.
We’re still waiting for you to support that charge. And no, vague handwaving about your “sense that what dionne has written is either purposefully deceptive or so partisan as to be useless as journalism” doesn’t count. And you’ve already been called out that Will isn’t expressing a dissenting opinion, but a dishonest one.
But then, it’s obvious you aren’t arguing in good faith.
Jackass.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
hmmm… so you feel that i have lied to you? exactly what makes me dishonest?
this really seems like more of a personal problem with you than a valid policy debate, but feel free to let it out. i am listening.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
actually greg,
i left a post about dionne on that thread. here it is again:
…here’s a perfect example of a progressive, ej dionne in this case, saying something dishonest in regards to the stimulus:
now here is christina romer in regards to one of her papers talking about tax cuts during the korean war:
in the same speech she goes on to say, in regard to this year’s stimulus plan:
is dionne wrong to argue that spending works better than tax cuts? no, that is a legitimate debate happening among economists. he is, however, dishonest to imply that only “idealougues” believe that tax cuts can have value in boosting the economy. unless, of course, you consider chrstina romer to be a right-wing wingnut or whatever your derisive term of the week is.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
As for the trolls that insist that all the world’s climate scientists are in some sort of coordinated conspiracy, here are *some* of the evidence that shows CO2 behind the warming. You’ll notice that most of them have nothing to do with models. Of course, that doesn’t stop the bought-and-paid-for, professional tin foil hat wearers.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
ps – i’m not sure what you mean by handwaving. my hands haven’t waved once… honest.
truth is, commenting is just a diversion from some of the more mundane aspects of my job. i don’t particularly feel the need to get all emotinally invested in these arguments.
i’m just not sure why you feel the need to dismiss everyone who disagree with you as “dishonest”. i disagree with jj, but i can see clearly enough that his opinion is honestly held. and he has no need to resort to histrionics and insults. if you can’t express your position without calling someone a jackass, maybe it’s time to give these things a little more thought. just sayin’…
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
[...] in Daily life, Environment, Global warming, Science, Washington Post at 9:26 am by LeisureGuy Matthew Yglesias: George Will writes: The “difficulty” — the “intricate challenge,” the Times says — is [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
They’ve been like this forever. Back in 2003, George Will libeled Wesley Clark. Clark said he had received calls from a think tank in Canada focused on middle east issues and Will claimed, crazily, “There is no such Canadian institution.”
I spent two weeks calling and complaining, trying to get the Post to correct their error and was repeatedly rebuffed. They simply don’t care about the truth.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Will’s column includes this sentence: “The Times reported that “scientists” — all of them? — say the 11 years of temperature stability has “no bearing,” none, on long-term warming.”
Doesn’t this convey the gist of the third paragraph of the Times story?
I think Will’s column is misleading and contains a number of false assertions, but I think it’s also a little misleading of Matt to say that Will manages to “not tell us what the third paragraph of the Times story says.”
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
I agree with Yglesias’s take on Will’s prior deceptive columns, but the criticism of this column is unwarranted. In fact, Will actually refers to (and quotes from) both paragraphs from the Times article that Yglesias says Will omitted. Look at this para:
The Times reported that “scientists” — all of them? — say the 11 years of temperature stability has “no bearing,” none, on long-term warming. Some scientists say “cool stretches are inevitable.” Others say there may be growth of Arctic sea ice, but the growth will be “temporary.” According to the Times, however, “scientists” say that “trying to communicate such scientific nuances to the public — and to policymakers — can be frustrating.”
The first sentence refers to (and quotes, albeit in very skimpy fashion) the allegedly missing third paragraph of the Times story. And the last sentence is almost a complete quote of the allegedly missing fouth paragraph of the Times story.
I think Will is 100% wrong about client change and has been very dishonest in the past. This column is also heavily slanted, but it’s an opinion column. And pace Yglesias, it does not omit the points Yglesias says it omits. In fact, the argument of the column is to criticize precisely those points.
Bottom line is that if you accuse someone of deliberate deception, you gotta have the goods. Yglesias doesn’t have them here, unlike with Will’s previous columns.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Let’s see here, AGW is science, but somehow not subject to the necessary review and testing that is part of science. Sounds like a religion to me, we just have to take it on faith.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
[...] Yglesias gives WAPO the smackdown yet [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
somehow not subject to the necessary review and testing that is part of science
[Points laughs.] Try two minutes on Google. IPCC, NAS, among literally dozens of others.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Led is right. Will simply did not omit the things Yglesias claims he omitted.
I guess Matt found this “too good to check.”
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Steve Duncan:
You are brilliant. Your response is almost exactly like the mountain of critiques of the Austrian School of Economics and the mountain of data, logic and historical evidence put forth to back up the Keynesian Fraud.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:51 pm
The Post’s op-ed page indeed makes me consider less the columns of Dionne and Ezra. I can’t read them without thinking that there’s some kind of pressure put on them.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
sesli chat sesli sohbet
gazzee
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Joseph E. Aldy, Alan J. Krupnick, Richard G. Newell ,
Ian W.H. Parry, and William A. Pizer in their paper “Designing Climate Mitigation Policy” claim:
Further, using mainstream models and assumptions, Chip Knappenberger finds that in the year 2050 with a 83% emissions reduction (the aspirational goal of Waxman-Markey, the beginning steps of which are under vigorous debate), the temperature reduction is nine hundredths of one degree Fahrenheit, or two years of avoided warming.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Rasmussen poll. LOL, Bob. Quick, tell us what the Zogby Internet poll says!
The prediction is going to be fairly quickly proven wrong. There has been a downswing in the cyclical variations which has worked to keep temperatures flat. This period is coming to an end, and we will soon be entering the upswing, during which temperatures will rise over the short term even more than the longer-term trend.
By Will’s logic, it is going to become very easy to get the public to support strong action on global warming over the next 5-10 years.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Yes, he is. He very easily got you to out yourself as a finge-lunatic Austiran cultist, lest anyone reading this thread find themselves inclined to treat your ravings as credible.
Well done, Mr. Duncan.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Like Led, I’m with Matt about both George Will’s past practices and global warming. But Will clearly does cover what Matt says is missing.
I’m amazed that it took 46 comments went up over four hours before anyone called Matt on this. Does anyone hear read the links?
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Joe from Lowell:
Since not one of you cement-heads has the slightest familiarity with any aspect of Austrian School thought, how are you in a position to know whether its principles are right or wrong? You’re not.
Keep making my day.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
We don’t need what Matt and the rest of the carbon cap crowd want – huge taxes and hairshirts. What we need is to get the environmental leftists to stop blocking nuclear power and GM food. You might try listening to Stewart Brand’s Ted Talk – too much of the left wants to stop nuclear and GMO food. That’s a death sentence for the poor.
I’m perfectly happy to replace all our coal fired plants with nuclear ones – and so would most of the right. The problem here is all on the left. Go talk to the problems at Greenpeace, Sierra Club (etc) – all of whom want to stop progress and send us all back to subsistence living.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:46 pm
And you guys can keep on keeping on with your straw men hippies from 40 years ago, if it helps with your non-reality-based base–ever horny for Sarah Palin and Joe the Plummer. Here’s Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
gVOR08 (response #5) says, “Neither [Will] nor Fred Hiatt nor Katharine Graham give a flying… about truth, much less what a bunch of DFHs like us think of them.”
Ms. Graham died in 2001, and I suspect the loss of her positive influence had much to do with the paper’s downward slide.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
This is infuriating. There is no plateau over the last decade. The Times story is dead wrong. The average temperature last year was roughly the same as the average temperature a decade ago, but that was the second-hottest year of all time. Year-to-year variation in temperature anomalies is simply much larger than the established warming trend. In fact, fitting all of the monthly anomaly data for the past decade shows a warming rate of 1.52 degrees Celsius/century. That is not a plateau. Compare that to the 1.34 degrees C/century rate when you fit the past 50 years of data. I looked at this awhile ago when Will wrote another stupid column quoting Mark Steyn – http://alchemytoday.com/2009/07/24/the-earth-has-warmed-faster-in-the-past-10-years-than-in-the-past-half-century/#disqus_thread
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Port Huron, Michigan has record low for the date.
And there are a bunch of anti-hysteric comments too.
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Bob Roddis– You mean it was cold today in Wagga Wagga?
There were lots of obituaries in the newspaper today. I think I’m going to use that to argue against world population is going up…
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
The thing that amazes about you hysterics is this white knuckle fear of an open debate. Always calling sceptics names and always claiming that they have been bought off. Hell, you could actually be right and your idiot tactics would still put off the entire public.
You are losing the PR debate with the public despite a decade of nothing but hysterics from the mainstream media. A calm, polite and rigorous statement of your proofs and a calm, polite and rigorous refutation of your opponents’ case might actually get you somewhere.
Frankly, I don’t deny that things have warmed up slightly. I fight it quite unlikely that the trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere had much to do with it. Further, it appears obvious that your capping of CO2 emissions is going to destroy the economy perhaps even more that your noodle-brain Keynesianism and won’t help control the alleged warming. Which may very well be the whole point, eh?
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Keynes doesn’t have much to do with it. You can find the word “externality” just as easily in Adam Smith.
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I remember the 60’s and 70’s well. Fogs of auto pollution blanketing our cities. Rivers catching fire due to pools of flammable petroleum products poured from industry into feeding streams. DDT killing birds and poisoning the food chain. Lead in paint, toxic clouds of cigarette smoke in workplaces, restaurants, hospitals and schools. Every effort to rein in pollution, to place controls over them, to inflict penalties on the worst offenders was greeted with a wailing chorus of Bob Roddis-like Chicken Littles. Government was going to kill the economy. It wasn’t any of their business if the lady running the daycare down the street wanted to blow Marlboro smoke into a child’s lungs. It was too expensive to manufacture anything, anything at all, and at the same time be mindful of the resulting toxins the process spun off. We HAD to pollute to compete. We HAD to smoke and drive drunk and not wear seat belts and teach kids the Earth was 6000 years old and kill Vietnamese and listen to Lawrence Welk and idolize John Wayne because WE WERE AMERICANS!! BY God, and a goddamned bunch of Commie hippy tree huggers wasn’t going to end our glorious way of life! Well, finally some of us are saying fuck you Bob Roddis and Bob Roddis doesn’t like it. Well cry me a fricking river. No, wait, that’s Glenn Beck’s job. Nevermind………
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
And as for hysteria, I like the hysteria from your side, that if scientists do research you don’t like, they must be commies and delegitimized at all costs (eg, lying campaigns in major newspapers). If it wasn’t for this hysteria, we would probably be in much better shape than we are today.
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
#69 – there’s anti-science all around, including on the left. The left is where a fair bit of the anti-vaccination crew live, it’w where nearly all the anti-GMO crew live, it’s where the anti-chemicals crew lives, it’s where the anti-nuclear crew lives.
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Steve Duncan:
Thanks for your calm, thorough and fact-based report. No one is allowed to smoke in my presence. When have I supported air pollution? CO2 isn’t a pollutant even if it does allegedly warm the planet.
For the record, I’d support closing the St. Lawrence Seaway immediately and permanently to stop the spread of invasive species in the Great Lakes, the economy be damned.
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I’ll concede there are cranks on the left. That’s not a surprise. But those people aren’t senators, like James Inhofe. They’re not presidents and vice-presidents like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, or the people those people appointed to run their government.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:37 pm
JJ is right — by and large the cranks on the left are not holding positions of power in the U.S., and it is the cranks on the right whose influence has, unfortunately, been felt. Unfortunately, though, I must say that one particularly prominent member of the anti-GM food crowd is the Prince of Wales, and he’s not alone in Europe.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Bob,
It is good to hear some reason, facts and common sense amongst the lunacies that populates this forum. MY and his posters here seem to drink deeply from whatever is the current liberal Kool-Aid. I am old enough to remember the non-stop warnings about Global Cooling caused by man and his emissions. That was a bust, too.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Adam,
Are you kidding? The entire administration is nothing but left-wing cranks that believe whatever stupidities they are told by their fellow travelers–one giant echo chamber.
And NO, I won’t go away just to please snobs like yourself.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:20 pm
George Will is relying on a reporter’s summary of what someone said the primary evidence shows. That’s third hand hearsay, and yet he believes it is just as good as understanding the primary evidence.
That is just too ignorant for words.
October 3rd, 2009 at 3:02 am
20 years from now it is gonna be super-ironic when the evidence of global warming is undeniable and it is too late to avoid the consequences and George Will will be insisting that he was right to be wrong and you were wrong to be right…just like he did for the Iraq War.
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:33 am
I doubt Bob Roddis has even taken gen chem. Aren’t you an attorney? What did you major in, basket weaving?
Jeez, give me a dozen lying Ian Plimers over the rank and file deniers who couldn’t pass an AP calc exam. This country needs a better educated populace or nothing else we do will matter.
People make fun of you because you aren’t capable of reading the primary literature, so there’s basically nothing else to do with you. You just want to live in your libertarian fantasy world, and 95% of what you do here is link into rubbish that couldn’t pass review. If you wanted to act like an adult and consult with experts in the relevant fields you could, but instead you choose to run to blogs filled with layman and engage in your regularly-schedule martyrdom and propaganda. There isn’t a dearth of climate experts with Internet access, you just aren’t even trying.
October 3rd, 2009 at 8:32 am
m:
I took an entire year of college biology, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics, plus a few courses in genetics and anatomy. I’ve been a weather freak since about 1969 and have collected weather data since about 1973. What about it?
Where are the in errors in the paper by Joseph E. Aldy, Alan J. Krupnick, Richard G. Newell , Ian W.H. Parry, and William A. Pizer in their paper “Designing Climate Mitigation Policy”? My understanding is that these authors are very mainstream and I don’t necessarily vouch for anything they say. But they do say that reducing CO2 emissions will probably be horrendously expensive. I’ve posted the link to this paper 3 or 4 times in these comments over the months. As with most anything I write here, I’ve seen no reasoned response, just the usual name-calling. Unless I’m mistaken, no one has mentioned the “Designing Climate Mitigation Policy” at all.
October 3rd, 2009 at 9:27 am
Simply put, they all work for an institution that seems utterly indifferent to whether the people who write for the paper are informing the readers or deliberately trying to mislead them.
Echoing several of your commenters above, while I find Will’s arguments on global warming misleading, your analysis of this particular column was just plain flat wrong. Yet you haven’t bothered to post a correction. The employees of Think Progress apparently work for an institution that seems utterly indifferent to whether the people who write for the organization are informing the readers or deliberately trying to mislead them.
October 3rd, 2009 at 11:59 am
Austrian cultist falls for the beliefs of related cults.
More news at 11.
October 3rd, 2009 at 4:03 pm
joe from Lowell:
Thanks for insightful, factual and thorough critique of the paper by Joseph E. Aldy, Alan J. Krupnick, Richard G. Newell , Ian W.H. Parry, and William A. Pizer. It’s similar in form and substance to your usual comments on economic matters. I guess you showed me.