2009.02.27
George Will sticks to his guns
A pathological unwillingness to admit a mistake must be a characteristic of people named George. In his column today, George Will insists he didn't err in his recent column on climate change even though, as we noted previously, he was pretty roundly slapped down. (The column will appear in Sunday's print edition of The Roanoke Times.)
Rather than repeat other people's work, I'll just point you to Talking Points Memo, where they sum up the continued problems with Will's misuse of science.
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I remember a time when Will was right about something. He made some remark about an event in history -- I don't recall the details, but he mentioned some year like DCCCCLXXXX, and a letter-writer tried to give him the spanking many of us have yearned for by calling him down on misuse of Roman numerals.
Beware of cheap shots!
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 11:33 am
JMHO: He is too worried about men hugging each other to do any real research and there are only so many sources that perpetuate the drivel he spewed. Like a lot of other 'nay sayers', he will join the bandwagon when others of his ilk do, we just have to hope it is not too late by then. For people who want to create jobs, this is a 'no-brainer'.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — February 27, 2009 @ 11:45 am
Come on, George. Give it up. Never mind there is no scientific agreement on MMGW. Never mind that a growing number of scientists have changed their minds are now discount global warming, and never mind that the last several years have been markedly colder.
The most damning of all is evidence that scientists who speak out against GW have trouble getting federal grants (which are decided by other scientists of the political establishment.
You would have though scientists woud be only interested in the truth; not come up with the "right" theory in order to get grants. Not so.
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4674
Comment by Tom — February 27, 2009 @ 1:11 pm
Will spends much of his time in the latest column reacting to a New York Times piece that disputed the original column (though others offered far weightier and substantial rebuttals, which Will mostly ignored). The author of The Times' piece, Andrew Revkin, weighed in with a detailed response to Will's reaction.
In addition, there's a good wrapup of the entire saga by Carl Zimmer, a science writer who knows his stuff, here.
My take? Will is dead wrong but completely unable to admit that either to himself or to his readers.
Comment by Dan Radmacher — February 27, 2009 @ 1:16 pm
My take? Will is dead wrong but completely unable to admit that either to himself or to his readers
Kinda sounds like verbage from the RTEB.
Oh buy the way.
another paper bites the dust.
Rocky mountian News.
Only a matter of time.
Comment by HERB KREBS — February 27, 2009 @ 1:26 pm
"Capitalism Magazine" -- Hah! no need to take Tom's link any farther.
What about the tens of thousands of climatologists who are not in the pay of polluting businesses?
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Here's my issue: you have climatologists on one side of this who are paid by the energy industry and say that GW/CC is bunk and government needs to stay out of it. You then have climatologists paid by the government through grants or university tenures who say GW/CC is real and the government needs to get more involved and regulate everything. Both sides are tainted by money in this, there are likely very, very few truly objective people out there providing an unbiased opinion on the data. Everyone has an agenda, and both sides are finding compelling ways to fashion the data and models to fit their end goals. Follow the money, this isn't just about GW/CC...it's about using it to make money, regardless of whether or not it's happening or humans are causing an impact.
Comment by Other John — February 27, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
OJ,
The way science works is by replicable experimental evidence. Replicable. That means it's not just one person pushing his own views. Those views have to be published in peer-reviewed journals.
Now the editorial staffs of some of these journals may have hidden agendas, on one side or another, and ready to point out any corruption they see on the other side. Scientists come in all political (and most religious) flavors, and if one steps out of bounds there are always others to call him on it.
A scientist makes his bones by publishing original research, discovering things nobody has known before. If anybody could, say, turn up evidence refuting the theory of evolution, or the century-old relationship between carbon dioxide and the Earth's temperature, there's a Nobel Prize waiting for him.
The idea that virtually every scientist in the world is sucking up to the establishment for grant money is not very plausible.
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
["Capitalism Magazine" -- Hah! no need to take Tom's link any farther.] - EdH
"Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are privately owned and controlled rather than commonly, publicly, or state-owned and controlled." - Wikipedia
If you enjoy being forced to give the money you earn to people who do not deserve it, then what would have been preferred? "Socialism Magazine"?? Oh Im sorry there was one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
Comment by Marked Man (Mark) — February 27, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
Ed, there have been reports that many climatologists who disagree with GW/CC have had their research funding yanked, while those who publish findings supporting it have gotten more funding. I wish I could remember where those reports were published, but it has happened. I just don't buy either side on this and what they're saying. I don;t buy all the doom and gloom predictions of the GW fanatics, and I don;t buy the "we can just keep plodding along" approach of the anti-GW crowd either. The truth of the matter is likely somewhere in the middle of their two extremes.
Comment by Other John — February 27, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
Oh, and I may have forgotten the most most important point of all. Real scientists stick to real science. They deal in objective facts. What public policies those facts may call for is not the scientists' call. That's the job of politicians.
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 3:46 pm
OJ, try ncseweb.org or http://www.expelledexposed.org
Try Greg Laden's blog. He has a long series of posts on global warming, beginning at
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/01/global_warming_the_blog_epic_0_2.php
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
And that's where my contention of all of this goes, Ed. The politicians make policies, and they control the purse strings of a slew of researchers who work at public universities. Just like it's not healthy for a scientist to be putting out research papers saying the GW is fake while they are getting payments from the oil industry...it's likewise not healthy for a scientist who is getting paid by the government who has made it well known that they want to control carbon through cap and trade programs and promote all sorts of GW prevention methods to be publishing papers supporting those government positions. Both sides are playing the money game to make sure they can keep getting paid for what they do. How long do you think a scientist would stay funded by the oil industry if they said buring oil caused it? They'd be dropped quicker than Citibank's stock fell today. Likewise, a scientist in the employ of the government would be kicked to the curb if they published a report saying that GW wasn't a major concern, because that would undermine the govenrmental efforts to exert further economic and social controls based on the "science" of global warming.
Comment by Other John — February 27, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
Christian, Dan,
Is that Roanoke physics teacher's commentary on global warming still available? The archive only goes back to Oct 28, 2008.
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 4:03 pm
OJ,
Even if it was true that anti-GW research was being discriminated against, I don't see the problem. The oil companies have got more money than all the government granting agencies put together.
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
Do you mean this one, Ed? Here's the discussion thread related to it, too.
Comment by c. trejbal — February 27, 2009 @ 4:31 pm
That's it. Thanks!
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
And another thing: Have you heard that Bush's Defense Dept did a study that concluded global warming is a threat to national security? Can you imagine the Bush Administration doing something like that if it wasn't true? I can hardly imagine it, even so.
Comment by Ed H — February 27, 2009 @ 5:34 pm
Ed, I'm not saying that I don;t think there is truth to the fact that the earth is warming, or that climate change occurs. I know that to be factual, it's happened all through the earth's history and there's plenty of proof that it has been both far warmer and far colder during human history as well, even before the industrial revolution. What I have a problem with is the modeling and "conclusive" proof that humans are single-handedly destroying the planet. There are models that show this to be going on. Those models also have been shown to have completely glitched out on being able to make predictions, and muh of their input data has been questioned. My main problem is that GW & CC are being used as tools to control the population. We should not be focusing on trying to stop something that may or may not be human driven, but rather focusing efforts on adapting to said changes, because whether or not we are causing it, we will have to deal with the end results. It would be more worthwhile to determine what the impacts may be and start adjusting to that eventuality, rather than trying to hold onto the notion that our climate of the last 30-50 years is the ideal/normal/static climate for the planet, when in fact there has never been anything static or normal since it's ever changing.
Comment by Other John — February 27, 2009 @ 5:45 pm