Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review decided to ask George Will a few questions about his recent column. I respect Steigerwald, precisely because he goes to the trouble of calling up people and asking questions directly. As many WUWT readers know, Will was recently villified for his column and for his printing of his interpretation on arctic sea ice. in particular. The excerpt below gives a window into Will’s thinking. – Anthony
Will on warming: The cold facts
By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, March 7, 2009
After George F. Will wrote a column last month questioning the faulty premises and apocalyptic predictions of global-warming alarmists, he caught holy heck from America’s “eco-pessimists.” He and his editors at The Washington Post were blasted with thousands of angry e-mails, most of which challenged Will’s assertion that global sea ice levels have not been dramatically reduced by man-made global warming, as environmentalists claim, but are essentially the same as they were in 1979. Will, who had used data from the Arctic Climate Research Center as his source, also was accused of multiple inaccuracies by The New York Times’ Andrew Revkin. Will wrote a second column defending his data and returning fire at Revkin.
All is calm now and Will is getting ready for the start of his favorite season — baseball season. I talked to him by phone on Thursday from his office in Washington.
- Q: You have felt the righteous wrath of those who believe in man-made global warming. Are you still all there?
- A: Oh, heavens. Yeah. The odd thing about these people is, normally when I write something that people disagree with they write letters to the editor or they write a responding op-ed piece. These people simply set out to try and get my editors to not publish my columns. Now I don’t blame them, because I think if my arguments were as shaky as theirs are, I wouldn’t want to engage in argument either.
- Q: The big issue was about how much global sea ice there is now compared to 1979.
- A: And that of course was a tiny portion of the column. The critics completely ignored — as again, understandably — the evidence I gave of the global cooling hysteria of 30 years ago.
- Q: They like to pretend that there really wasn’t any hysteria back then.
- A: Since I quoted the hysteria, it’s a little hard for them to deny it.
- Q: What disturbs you most about this global warming consensus that seems to be pretty widespread and doesn’t seem to be eroding?
- A: Well, I think it is eroding, in the sense that people sign on to be alarmed because it’s socially responsible … (and because it makes them feel good). But once they get to the price tag, once they are asked to do something about it, like pay trillions of dollars, they begin to re-think.
I’ve never seen anything quite like this in my now 40 years in Washington. I’ve never seen anything like the enlistment of the mainstream media in a political crusade — and this is a political crusade, because it’s about how we should be governed and how we should live; those are the great questions of politics. It is clearly for some people a surrogate religion. It’s a spiritual quest. It offers redemption. But what it also always offers, whether it is global cooling or global warming, is a rationale for the government to radically increase its supervision of our life and our choices. Whether the globe is cooling, whether it’s warming, the government’s going to be the winner and the governing class will be the winner.
read the entire column at the Pittsburg Tribune-Review
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“The real fact is that government needs more money to take care of us, and using “cap and trade” is a good way for them to get it. ”
There it is right there.
Someone who wants to be taken care of by a nanny state and doesn’t care if the rest of us don’t want that.
Ellie in Belfast,
If government wants to give the economy a kick start and speed up innovation they need do only do a few things.
-Scrap income tax. Government collects plenty of taxes from alcohol, firearms, licenses, road tax, sales tax, cigarettes, gas, import/export duties, TV licenses, and so on! The money we keep from scrapping income taxes gets spent on most of the above anyway.
-Lead by example. Streamline government and making it more efficient.
-Technology, automobile and energy companies should be given a tax rebate for every penny they spend on Research and Development. This encourages them to spend as much as possibly on development and head hunting for talent.
Very simple solution and much better than flooding banks with Monopoly money.
It is only anecdotal, but the lows in Plentywood, Montana for the next 3 days are to be -6, -17, and -25F.
Aron,
For the most part I couldn’t agree more. Especially with your last two lines.
R&D tax credits do that exist are good, but it is still a case of the government controlling how money is spent (i.e. we’ll tax you, then allow you to claim it back for certain things we really want you to do).
The point I’m making is that they will do all they can to keep global warming as an excuse.
Tenney declared,
” global sea ice extent, a virtually worthless number when discussing the science of climate change”.
Have you told Gore that?
Next thing you’ll be doing is telling us global temperature trends are worthless when discussing the science of climate change.
Tenny,
Do you realize how many unrelated observations the alrmists have, without any basis, attributed to global warming? It’s a stunning demonstration of
cult like fabrications.
Yet you are inferring that it is Will, et al, (people here) who are applying worthless data to global warming.
You must have a job in the global warming arena.
bill: “Are you against helping people?”
I prefer to help people when I choose, where I choose, how I choose. I do not believe in the government taking my money by threat of force to help people they want to help which may not be the same as those I want to help.
It is a tried and true method of dictatorships to first take away the people’s money, then their guns and then ration the staples of life to keep everyone dependent on those in power. Step one is underway in the US, beware when step two begins (very shortly I think).
George Will: “I’ve never seen anything quite like this in my now 40 years in Washington. I’ve never seen anything like the enlistment of the mainstream media in a political crusade “…. perhaps then this chap should start paying attention to the world around him. He could start with the widespread failure of the media in the build up to the Iraq war. He could also look into the medias hyping of the housing boom (espcialy neanderthals like Jim Cramer).
Actualy any ‘journalist’ who makes a statement like the one above is either lying or stupid.
Thanks for this post Anthony.
The value is Will’s identification of AGW as interest group politics. Present day AGW theory is IMO, an altruistic mutation. At the outset, enviro-greens embraced the need for a more sustainable planet. Their goal was to enlist youth and progressives into a political movement with ecology as its front piece. But buried inside the ecology is the core agenda: social engineering, behavior modification, and collective government.
The architects of the eco-front are trained in “catastrophe action.” The causal effect of fear-based behavior modification. For global modification they needed a global catastrophe – so a few scientists hatched the carbon dioxide scenario as their focal point. Global warming addresses a concoction of political enemies: big oil, big industry, market-based economies, sovereign nationality, materialism and ultimately, individuality. While many climbed aboard the train to alternative energy/energy independence with good intent – it has veered far off track to an absurd level of social engineering and virtual sophistry.
As is acknowledged here daily – the science behind AGW is wobbly at best. Mr. Will, and a growing body of honest scientists, skeptics and good people are coming forward to tell that story. It WILL be heard for one simple reason: it is true.
Tenney:
Have you ever complained to AGW proponents, like Gore for instance, that ” global sea ice extent, [is] a virtually worthless number when discussing the science of climate change”? If not, why not?
Pragmatic, what you describe is eerily similar to communism… and we all know what the human cost ended up being.
I hope George Will and the “Where’s the Beef?” editorials etc. are the start of a new wave in journalism.
The shrill and sophomoric reactions we’ve been hearing lately are true signs of AGW desparation. It won’t be too long before the rats start to leave their sinking ship.
I hope that George Will will keep his promise to keep writing about AGW.
I expect he will once Congress starts their grand Cap & Trade legislation in earnest.
Tenney @ur momisugly (05:27:37):
Tenney, in all seriousness, have you not heard or seen the hue & cry from the AGW crowd and their friends in the media about the poor, helpless, drowning polar bears over the past number of years? It is one of the most often-used canards that is trotted out by Mr. Gore and his fellow AGW alarmists as proof of
global warming“climate change”.The good Rev. Watts and his incredibly talented team of
deniersskeptics have repeatedly corrected the >scientific record with their carefully-researched responses to the unscientific, shoddy and, sometimes, shady “peer-reviewed findings” and reporting on AGW. (The recent BBC kerfluffle immediately leaps to mind.)Mr. Watts and his fellow researchers are more than happy to openly debate the facts and, more importantly, they will admit when mistakes in data crunching have been made and they will correct the record publicly, for all to see. Will you be admonishing Mr. Gore & his good friend, James Hansen, for their on-going refusal to publicly debate the facts, in a neutral forum, and their continued refusal to publicly (and loudly) admit the gargantuan flaws in their “science”?
Best regards,
B.C.
There’s blue smoke coming out of the tailpipe of AGW, and a big oil drip when it’s parked. George Will and the Boston Globe just left a couple of tickets on the windshield. Fixit tickets.
“There must be plenty of other companies benefitting from the warming scare who also have staff wotking with the IPCC.”
There is a name for this economic arrangement. It is fascism. Here is a definition of fascism that is pretty even handed.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html
Most of the other links to fascism are ironically very funny, because they purport to show that Bush was a fascist, but when you look at them, the “points of fascism” fit Obama far better than they do Bush. For instance, Orwell predicted the “Weekly Hates” that improve loyalty among the faithful. These hates were aimed at individuals. The most recent “hate” of the Obama followers is Rush, but before that it was George Will, before that it was Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter is always good for a sweet frisson of lefty hate, of course there is the incomparable Bush, but before that, they hated his dad, they hated Reagan with a deep passion. The left needs a crisis, “it is a shame to let a good crisis go to waste” Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emmanuel both said it, so let’s invent one in Global Warming.
“He could also look into the medias hyping of the housing boom (espcialy neanderthals like Jim Cramer).”
Dorlomon, don’t read this post if you want to keep your precious beliefs intact, because it is devastating, and the sooner you forget all of this evidence of Democrat malfeasance, the better for your brownshirt voice on the blogs.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/03/meltdown.html
Hint, Barack Obama, as a young lawyer, filed suit against CitiBank to force them to make sub prime loans, on the grounds that not to do so was racist.
I guess the new weekly hate is against Jim Cramer, who dared to criticize “the one.” All patriotic comrades who benefit from the glorious revolution must now hate evil enemy of the people “Jim Cramer” as he has been denounced as traitor by White House!
Mike Kelley (08:32:05) : said
“It is only anecdotal, but the lows in Plentywood, Montana for the next 3 days are to be -6, -17, and -25F.”
MIke, this is alarming, especially as I have noticed that the English Channel a few hundred yards from my house suddenly dropped no less than 2 feet in an hour and half an hour later was down by 3 foot 6. So there are two ecological disasters about to happen.
The first is that through a series of complex yet robust calculations I can confidently state that Plentywood will have reached absolute zero within 15 hours. Secondly that the entire English Cannel will be drained in the same time, thereby stranding ships and causing all the fish to die.
Extrapolation of trends is a well known and highly exact science so can you please let me know this time tomorow if you have managed to survive absolute zero? For my part I will be taking the opportunity to walk to france. Keep safe and wrap up well.
TonyB
All journalists must stand the criticism with which they level.
It doesn’t mean we hate them, and it doesn’t mean that to criticize them makes us facist. Filing a lawsuit doesn’t make one a facist, either.
When the dissenting views are quashed, that is the day you can be alarmed.
Until then, the Sun remains blank of spots, the solar flux is flatlined, the cosmic rays are at max, the magnetogram is listless, the ocean is not rising 10 feet a year, the Poles are not melting in searing heat, and journalists like George Will take their aim at obvious “where’s the beef” discrepancies.
Solar Physicists like Leif Svaalgard put out their predictions and theories with the understanding that if they are wrong, they will withdraw gracefully.
Others like Hathaway keep twiddling and draw the fire they deserve.
Still others, like Hansen & Gore, go over the edge when they start demanding that half the power in the US be turned off on the basis of thier model that has obviously gone terribly awry.
If you want a truly alarming predicition, try Johannes Friede (1204-1257)
“When nights will be filled with more intensive cold and days with heat, a new life will begin in nature. The heat means radiation from the earth, the cold the waning light of the sun. Only a few years more and you will become aware that sunlight has grown perceptibly weaker. When even your artificial light will cease to give service, the great event in the heavens will be near. ”
It’s so darned easy to look back 50 years or so and make a prediction, is it not?
How hard is it to make a prediction 750 years ago, and hit a homer?
Hint: You can’t go around handing out dates 3/4 of a thousand years hence.
Your hockey stick will have crumbled into dust long before that.
Leave it to a George Will to tread first where others tremble.
Nobody bats a 1,000, but there are those who are Willing to face the meanest/scariest pitchers, with the game on the line in the 9th inning, and earn thier respect every day of the week.
For all of you believers in science, who are picking on Tenney Naumer, please reconsider your arguments.
He’s right, not for the reason you read into his post but because of the weasel wording of his argument. Tenney did not say that global sea ice extent was worthless when discussing “global warming”. He said it was worthless “when discussing the science of climate change”. And there’s the rub, there is no science behind climate change.
The first rule of the scientific method is that a hypothesis must be formulated in such a way that it can be disproved. The hypothesis of global warming has been disproved by a decade of cooling and multiple studies of the components of the computer models.
That’s why Al Gore and associates have spent $300M re-branding the issue as climate change. Because climate always changes, the concept of climate change cannot be disproved. And so it is not science.
Climate change or climate crisis are just red herrings to keep the focus off of the failure of the hypothesis of CO2 caused global warming.
Politics anyone?
Tenney had it right. i am surprised by the reactions. GLOBAL sea ice extend is an unimportant factor. global warming has its strongest effect on summer arctic sea ice. and VOLUME is the important factor, that you guys should look at.
the “global cooling hysteria” of the 70s is a myth as well. a handful of articles in popular science magazins, nothing in real scientific journals.
Tenney Naumer (#8)
“George Will lives in his own mental parallel universe — his entire column was pure rubbish, totally unfounded in science, not just the bit about the global sea ice extent, a virtually worthless number when discussing the science of climate change, a fact that you ALWAYS conveniently leave out for your readers — what’s up with that?”
Then that means we shouldn’t see the MSM trot out the “sea ice extent reaches new low”, or “sea ice extent levels have unprecedented decline” or…
Any talk about a “ice free Arctic” means they ARE discussing the sea ice. Remember, the majority of the Arctic IS sea ice.
And, BTW, if this number is so unimportant, why are the NSIDC and Cryosphere Today tracking it, anyway?
I think in some ways the press releases from places such as NASA have generated some unrealistic expectations on the part of the average person. By sounding so authoritative in tone, people get the impression that we know, with a high degree of confidence, what is going on inside the sun. So when the forecasts fail, they want to cast the scientists involved as incompetent or something. I see it as the sun is sort of like a black box. We can’t know what is actually going on inside right now and we attempt to deduce what is going on by what emits from the box. Now maybe there is no “one thing” that drives the solar cycles.
Maybe there is a combination of many factors. Maybe we don’t even know about them all yet. And so you might have one group of researchers who are looking at one set of indications and another group of researchers watching another. Maybe some cycles one group is more accurate maybe other cycles the other group is more accurate. It might not mean that one group or the other is more or less competent than the other. It might just mean that the thing one group is watching this cycle is more dominant in the total dynamics going on inside and in other years, the other thing is dominant. And it could be that all things things operate independently and “beat” against each other in ways that make them both wrong sometimes and other things they haven’t discovered yet dominate what is going on or they all cancel each other out or something.
We seem to have this expectation that a researcher can forecast with some degree of certainty what is going to happen with the sun each cycle. And when one group or individual gets it right this time, everyone runs from the other forecasters and say things like “Others like Hathaway keep twiddling and draw the fire they deserve.”
Didn’t Hathaway get cycle 23 pretty much right? What happens when we get a cycle where Svalgaard and Hathaway both get it wrong? I don’t think that reflects on their competence as researchers and scientists, I think that reflects on the complexity of what they are studying and how much humans still don’t know about what is going on inside the sun.
Maybe there are things going on that we can’t see. Maybe as the sun goes around the galaxy we go through areas that have more or less “dark” matter and maybe that stuff causes changes in how the sun works. We can’t see the stuff so we can’t tell in advance what is going to happen. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not literally saying that dark matter changes the sun because I would have no way of knowing that. What I am saying is that there could well be things that we can’t see yet or know about yet that have an influence on what goes on. Or there could be several things and they operate on slightly different cycles and sometimes they add together and sometimes they cancel or there could be other things that modify the things we know about.
In other words, I believe this expectation that any researcher is going to “get it right” 100% of the time given the state of our knowledge of what drives solar cycles is unreasonable and unfair to the researchers involved.
Polyscience is for us layman sitting around having a beer with friends. We don’t mean anything by it, and we don’t go around forcing it on others.
If you get up on the Soapbox and start dishing out scary predictions that fail, then prepare to get escorted off the Soapbox. You’ll be the talk of the next round at the Pub, and attract the barbs of journalists like Will.
If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Next!
I also thought of “Iraq’s WMDs” when George Will talked about how the media has become a hysteria machine rather than a provider of information. If it bleeds, it leads. Same applies to a great deal of the silly stuff we do nowadays.