Will's climate change column sparks outrage in environmental community
After Post refuses to address numerous global warming falsehoods, leading environmental organizations join Media Matters in calling for correction
Today, Media Matters for America President Eric Burns joined Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski, and Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder in issuing a letter to Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander asking him to address several blatant falsehoods in George Will's February 15 column about global warming.
Yesterday, Media Matters sent an action email, asking readers to contact the Post, which prompted thousands of activists to send correction requests.
"George Will's factually challenged attempt to deny the link between human activity and climate change is a stain on a publication respected for its commitment to accuracy," said Burns upon the release of the letter. "Will's column and the Post's refusal to address its falsehoods have drawn ire from thousands of Media Matters readers and sparked outrage from esteemed leaders and members of the environmental community. Hopefully, these actions will encourage the Post to finally correct the record."
The letter, a copy of which is included below, rebuts several falsehoods in Will's column. As Media Matters recently noted, Alexander reportedly responded to one of these claims with further distortions of the facts.
Andy Alexander
Ombudsman
The Washington
Post
1150 15th St. NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Mr. Alexander:
We are writing today to express urgent concern over your refusal to correct George Will's February 15 column, "Dark Green Doomsayers." Will used his nationally syndicated column to make several clear distortions about global warming.
First, Will misused data on global sea ice levels from the Arctic Climate Research Center (ACRC), wrongly suggesting that ACRC data undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus surrounding "man-made global warming." In fact, the ACRC says the opposite is true -- the sea ice data Will cited actually support the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming.
Second, Will claimed that "according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade." Will cited no source and provided no quote for this claim. In fact, last year, the WMO stated that the "long-term upward trend of global warming, mostly driven by greenhouse gas emissions, is continuing." And just last month, WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud reportedly said: "The major trend is unmistakably one of warming."
Third, Will rehashed the discredited myth that in the 1970s, there was broad scientific consensus that the Earth faced an imminent global cooling threat.
Will's column has sparked widespread criticism. Yet, the only response from the Post seems to be to defend Will with further misinformation. When Brad Johnson from the Center for American Progress Action Fund contacted you to correct Will's distortions, you reportedly refused to acknowledge that they exist.
Global warming is one of the most urgent issues facing our country and the entire world. In dealing with an issue of such magnitude, the Post has a duty to provide the truth to its readers.
George Will is entitled to his own opinions, but he is not entitled to his own facts. We respectfully ask that you immediately make your readers aware of the glaring misinformation in Will's column.
Thank you.
Carl Pope
Executive Director, The Sierra Club
Gene Karpinski
President, League of Conservation Voters
Brent Blackwelder
President, Friends of the Earth
Eric Burns
President, Media Matters For America
To view a PDF of the letter, please visit:
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It's about time someone told the truth about the hoax that is "Man-made Climate Change". In fact, NASA's own data supports the cooling trend over the past decade.
And it's funny - I always thought an ombudsman was someone who carries a group's concerns forward, interjecting none of his or her own personal feelings. I'll expect this guy's resignation will show up in the next couple of week's in thePost.
Thank you, George Will, for getting the truth into the Post - I am sure it felt weird surrounded by so many leftward-biased stories.
Zoltan
Are you a member of "Illiterates for Will?"
Perhaps on planet Zoltan, up is down and so on, but here on planet earth, we need to reduce our carbon emissions for many reasons. There is no middle ground here, we either try to correct the problem, or suffer enormous consequences. Which do you want?
You didn't even read the article, did you?
Zoltan,
Powerline is down the hall. This isn't an echo chamber.
Wow. Are you joking or just incredibly stupid? (I aopolgize if I'm missing your Colbert-esque satire.)
Starting in the mid-1960's we were told of the dire threat of "overpopulation" and that food shortages were going to threaten human existence. (See The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich.) Now we have so much food, we pay farmers NOT to grow their crops.
Then in the 1970's we were told the Earth was cooling in a dangerous way, and - again - humanity was in danger (if a "nuclear winter" didn't wipe us out first, of course).
In 1987, Oprah Winfrey told her nationwide audience that 1 in 5 heterosexual men would be dead of AIDS in three years. It didn't happen.
And remember the SARS scare a few years back? Mad-cow disease? We were all doomed, according to the "experts."
All these cases had "scientists" and the "figures" to supposedly back them up.
Due to scientists' awful track record of dire, end-of-the-world predictions, why should I believe this "global warming" hysteria? (I shouldn't, and I won't. I will simply keep driving my hybrid and do my share in keeping the air clean.)
And you think you can extrapolate the USA large crops to the entire rest of the world? No wonder you so often post nonsense.
You need to join Zoltan on the illiterate bench.
Congratulations, shoes89, it's a bouncing, baby straw boy.
On the Internet, no one knows you're an idiot. Unless you post drivel like the quote above.
Starting in the mid-1960's we were told of the dire threat of "overpopulation" and that food shortages were going to threaten human existence. (See The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich.) Now we have so much food, we pay farmers NOT to grow their crops.
Food shortages are disturbingly real. According to the United Nations Statistics Division, 848 million people were undernourished in 2003-2005. People not having food security or dying from starvation is a political problem. I don't know about you but I might riot and threaten my neighbors if my family was dying from starvation while neighboring countries are paying farmers not to grow food to artificially prop up the market.
You can't tell Global Warming Deniers that there is a food shortage- they think that a blizzard in February is proof Global Warming is a lie, so I'm sure every visit to the local Safeway is evidence to them that there's no food shortage.
Trying to argue with these children is just a waste of time.
I'm a school social worker so trying to educate children is what I do for a living. Perhaps we just need to use more pictures, brighter colors, and make learning about global warming into a game. Or we could use more tangible incentives, since the threat of global catastrophe does not seem to be motivating enough...perhaps we can give out pieces of candy each time they try to reduce their carbon footprint. :)
you are so dangerous, it's frightening. why not just tie them up, beat the crap out of them until they agree with all the nonsense you are trying to put in their heads.
I think he was trying to come up with ways to educate YOU...
Thanks for reading and using your brain before you post RMS. :) It seems like fmsbanker87 has the same problem as many right wingers; he either lacks basic reading comprehension or he takes a statement out of context and scares himself to death.
>>Then in the 1970's we were told that the earth was cooling.
No, we weren't. The link you provided is to f**ing *Newsweek*--not s scientific source.
link
Likewise with the rest of your nonsense. The media might say all sorts of stupid things, but there was not a massive consensus based on science, as there is with global climate change.
Ok. 1 by 1...
FAMINE due to overpopulation has largely been averted by innovation. (On energy and climate change and sustainable energy this is somethe Conservative are working against) Bah-da-bing!
Global Cooling - Firts of all, only a small % of scientists claimed this. Second of all, there was a theory that CFC's were causing this. CFC's went away and HEY! Cooling tredn ended! Boom!
Oprah Winfrey is an ENTERTAINER. And she's WRONG almost as much as Rush Limbaugh. If you want to stop listeneing to sheisters that go on talk shows and START listeneing to researched who PUBLISH THEIR FINDING S IN PEER REVIEWED JOURNALS, then I'm all for it. Of coure I'M already there! Boom-boom-Bap!
Sars? Mad Cow? Well, yeah... We listened to the experts and destroyed the infected cows, did the medical research, took appropriate measure and BAM - DEALT WITH THE PROBLEMS. (Something the Republicans don't wnat gov't to try and do.) KA-BOOM!
Are you done yet? You keep settin'em up. It's like Mickey Mantle taking cuts off a batting tee. You conservatives might realize how stupid you sound if you stopped parroting talking poitns and tried actually THINKING and ANALYZING things for a change.
It's called weather and happens in spite of man's presence!
You should not be proud of the fact that you do not know the difference between climate and weather.
No, but your delusional dreck is called willful ignorance and it happens in spite of education.
it's called IGNORANCE and it happens in spite of Liberal's presence!
nice to see some people question lock step man is responcible for everything. scientists and morons on the FAR left have given some bad numbers on climate change making it hard to believe somethings that may be true. there is alot of guesswork on it
Science is either Left or Right?
I thought it was Right or Wrong.
Does a scientific theory developed by a Conservative work differently than one developed by a Liberal?
Are you nuts?
science is supposed to right or wrong thats what i love about it. its when you poor politic all over it and make wrong conclusions you get a mess. if a repug questions it he must be wrong. why, not because it lacks science, its because the other political side just knee jerks.
No it's because he has no evidence that the entrenched interest (oil, coal, auto, nuclear) hasn't given him. And it's because there's not one single published, vetted theory that explains what we're observing. Conservatives have been fighting scientific progress since the invention of the telescope.
oh one more thing. it does seem to work that scirnce by a liberal is different than a conservitive. inteligent design anyone. i prefer real science but its hard to come by.
"Intelligent Design" is not science. It cannot be tested, measured, observed, supported, demonstrated, proven or refuted. It's religion, jsut stripped of theology, and dressed up to look like science in order to confuse the ignorant. IE is NOT science and has no place in any scientific discussion.
When Conservatives don't believe in Science, the theories don't work at all, and can't be called "scientific theories" by any stretch of the imagination.
No.
There is no tested, vetted and published scientific theory refuting climate change. Not one. Not one article, not one paper, not one. single. paragraph. That's because there is not any EVIDENCE that reftutes the warming trend and no EXPLANATION for it that has withstood scientific scrutiny.
Well look at that, the folks that signed this letter all have a stake in making sure folks like Will do not talk about GW in the future.
We all have a stake in Global Warming. A very hot one. It's disturbing to see obstructionists like Will trying to delay the action needed to address this problem.
Yeah, people who know up from down, day from night, their butts from third base and aren't on Exxon's payroll.
Will's column was purely factual. The truth hurts doesn't it?
If by "factual" you mean mistaken, lying and false, then yes, it was "factual."
Do you have anything better to say?
It's hurts conservatives apparently. That must be why they rely on it so seldomly.
Jesus, I don't know whether its' more funny or sad when the Heads-Up-their-butts Global Warming Deniers swarm in here to spread their Earth is Flat manure. I just hope to hell you idiot losers don't breed.
I think it's great that these wingnuts deny AGW. It is turning a lot of erstwhile republicans against them. There are a lot of folks out there who are outdoorsmen a la Teddy Roosevelt, who have voted republican because they have a DYI mentality. But these same outdoorsmen are seeing fish disappear, the wildlife vanish, the deer carcasses on the roadsides, and the dirty water, and they are starting to ask question. So keep it up deniers! You are the vanguard of the death-knell of the republican party and "conservative" ideology!
I find AGW deniers amusing like I find flat-earthers amusing. Their ignorance has become so absurd that they are neutering themselves - rendering themselves harmless.
Whoops! Looks like Albert Arnold Al Gore had to retract some data...
Guess the U of Louvain (?) got it a little wrong...
Where did he find these guys?!
Gore pulls slides
Oh, and your rocket blew up...Will probably sabotaged it!
Global warming carbon observatory blows up
I especially like the part about launching albert into space! ;)
You really can't post anything either coherent or on topic, can you?
Al Gore had enough integrity to pull a slide that was later shown to be questionable - and this is a bad thiing?
Hmmm, now only if the flat-earther's could stop using 10 and 15 year old debunked data as "proof" of their "global warming is a hoax" propoganda, the doubters of world might actually start pulling their heads out of the sand.
Global warming deniers like to say global warming is a hoax. But a look at the behavior of the global-warming scientists strongly suggests otherwise.
When a hoax is exposed, the hoaxers usually fudge, hem and haw, and retreat forthwith. This is inevitable, since a hoax has nothing to back it up. Once the ruse is revealed, hoaxers must generally withdraw from the field, often very hastily.
But the people warning us about global warning behave nothing like like hoaxers who've been exposed. Quite the contrary, they are pressing the attack, presenting new evidence that the situation is worse than they thought, reasserting their case, debunking the opposition, publishing new reports, etc.
A child can see: this is not the way hoaxers behave.
In sharp contrast, every global warming denier in the world has a different story, based on different crackpot theories. This is far more consistent with a hoax than the behavior of the global-warming proponents.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_3wJzkxmBQ">Myst</a>
Unfortunately, global warming is a perfect example of what's going on in the Media. As MMFA noted earlier, the media presents very few economists to discuss the troubled economy. Likewise, there are very few scientists on TV debating global warming and so we're left with debates between Rush Limbaugh and Al Gore. The Media is all about celebrity and has NOTHING to do with the truth anymore.
Al Gore at least knows what he's talking about.
No kidding! Rush and Gore, yeah they are basically the same except one is from the right and the other from the left. Good lord.
yeah, he talks about gw because he makes millions from it. he is driving us into a ditch
Yeah, when Gore started talking about GW in the 80's he knew that someday all his talk would generate millions for him.
Yeah - It's all about money alright - the money that the denying "skeptics" stand to lose should the status quo of their world be upset by any government regulations to combat climate change. Nice projection though - you folks do it so well.
Tell it like it is - not like you want the world to believe it to be.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton_papers/greenhouse_warming_what_greenhouse_warming_.html
Well there you go. I guess the GW debate is now over. This non-peer reviewed paper by the British politician/business consultant/policy adviser/writer/inventor Christopher Monckton pretty much closes the case.
>>link to monckton
There's a sucker born every minute. This paper is full of such bad science, that I thought it was a spoof at first. This paper is *not* peer reviewed, and is laughed at by anyone who knows the science.