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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sod:
LOL!
No, it was real. You obviously weren’t there… but go ahead, make absurd claims about something you know nothing about. That seems to be the hallmark of your “side”.
The global cooling scare isn’t a myth, but it wasn’t as wide scale as anything you see now
No, it was real. You obviously weren’t there… but go ahead, make absurd claims about something you know nothing about. That seems to be the hallmark of your “side”.
there is some hard data available on this topic. enjoy.
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/89/9/pdf/i1520-0477-89-9-1325.pdf
Oops, we’re at it again, this time the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/4957830/Rising-sea-levels-from-global-warming-could-wipe-out-Norfolk-Broads.html
Maurice Garoutte wrote:
“For all of you believers in science, ”
Anyone who ‘believes’ in science can exit stage left right about now. Science and the scientific method is not about belief, it is about predictions and results. Science produces an abstraction of reality, a reduced (reductionist) view of reality that can be used to make predictions about the the physcial world. Even Newtons fantastic model of gravity was eventualy supplanted by special and general relativity, but can still be widely used.
One should not ‘believe’ in science, one should simply accept that it represents a series of efforts to reduce the universe to understandable and predictable abstractions.
And back when the Ice Age coming hysteria was out and about, we the ordinary walk of life were more concerned about the immediate consequences and what was being done about it. Nobody paid attention to who was calling for it, or what political persuasion they were.
The biggest surprise I got with AGW was to find out that Hansen was formerly IAC (Ice Age Coming).
The hockey stick was simply flip over (flip-flop).
So does a fish on the shore. Flip-Flop.
George Will would be the cat pawing the water out of the goldfish bowl.
Yummy fishy.
sod wrote:
“Tenney had it right. i am surprised by the reactions. GLOBAL sea ice extend [sic] is an unimportant factor.”
HUH???
Well I guess it is a free country and a free world and I suppose people are free to say what they want to say and free to believe what they want to believe…no matter how ridiculous.
But back to this thread:
How about that George Will?? He is (and always has been) one of the best intellects in the journalistic world.
His weapon? Logic, truth, and a good dose of common sense. He would make a damn good scientist.
My favorite quote of Will in this latest interview (my emphasis in CAPS:)
“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 A SURROGATE RELIGION.”
Spot on, George! Keep it coming.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
sod
In light of the fact that the great loss in sea ice extent predicted for the last two summers never happened and that taking into account the uncertainties involved it doesn’t appear there has been any decline in 30 years in ice extent, what the heck makes you think the ice volume is vastly different?
In the absence of some pretty unlikely to exist evidence, that contention is just silly.
As to the 70s global cooling hysteria, it wasn’t as persistent or immune to scientific evidence as the current rubbish; but, I lived through it, saying it is a myth is a bald faced lie. The agenda driven pseudo scientists appear to have learned from their failure to get modern society to commit suicide with their acid rain hysteria, or with their nuclear winter scenario, or pesticides, or take your pick of a dozen other evironmental apocalypse predictions; that doesn’t mean they are finally right this time.
sod (14:40:45) :
Thanks for that sod. Unfortunately it’s not “hard data”, it’s an opinion piece.
Come up with some *real* hard data please. Thank you.
I think that what Sod and Tenney are arguing is that GLOBAL sea ice is meaningless. This follows the typical warmist meme of cherry picking. The Antarctic ice is growing? It’s “climacticly isolated”. The arctic ice is shrinking? It’s the “canary in the coal mine ” for AGW.
I find myself impatient with those who insist there was no Global Cooling hysteria at the time in question in this thread. Perhaps those insisting it never happened are simply younger people. Those of us getting old (I’m 57) remember, and to tell us it didn’t happen, and it was no big deal . . . is very unsatisfying. One can forgive those who get a little testy about being told that the fact they observed never happened.
Also, John is right about the “Myth of the global cooling consensus”. I would add that soon there will articles touting the “Myth of the global warming consensus”! 🙂
Best to you all, and goodnight!
Grant Hodges
I threw out some things from my parents house that were all related to programs in school that covered the “coming ice age”. I wish I had kept them, but there was absolutely concern over this issue.
As to Tenney’s first post on this topic, if sea ice extent is such a worthless number (in my opinion it would be properly termed a value), what makes it so? And further, what value would be appropriate?
I ask you Tenny to check how sea ice extent has been used to support the theory of man made CO2 as the primary driver of global warming.
A simple web search :
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/an_inconvenient_truth_team_gor_1.html
This is just one of many articles purporting that declining sea ice extent has had a remarkable effect on the environment. This one was relating to how the reduction in ice extent is imperiling the polar bear. Even “An Incovenient Truth” has it cited.
There are many more, but I’m waiting for some “proof” on your part rather than a swipe at those who are skeptics. The burden of proof on your theory is on you. Please, show me how wrong I am.
Grant,
I remember the cooling scare and I was really frightened.
I think that anyone who denies this past event might be properly called a “cooling scare denier”, just as those who deny another past event might properly called “holocaust deniers”.
If you don’t believe something that is supposedly manifesting itself NOW however, I don’t think you can properly call that person a denier. Am I a “parapsychology denier”, a “ghost denier” or a “flying saucer denier”. No, but I am rightly skeptical that those things are verifiable, even though the documentation is voluminous and the percentage of Americans who believe is astounding.
In my opinion AGW Skeptic is the only honest way to describe someone who does not believe the ramshackle case for man-caused warming.
Once again, this thread has boiled down to the actual problem: a Belief system.
Kids today don’t “believe” in the ice age scare, because they look stuff up on Google and can’t see much there. Of course, it doesn’t occur to them that back in the 70s THERE WAS NO INTERNET… no method of gaining news other than the mainstream media or wild-eyed lunatics passing out typewritten screeds on streetcorners. As a result, we were forced to believe what the media told us.
Oh, and we believed a lot of crap. Take, for example, the baby boomer generation. The entire generation that were teens and early 20s in the 1960s were uniquely programmed to believe some of the most absurd and ridiculous things. They were forced to endure a war (as if no other generation before them ever got drafted), and were empty vessels to be used for propaganda by the enemy… which many did very enthusiastically and effectively (ahem Jane Fonda).
It’s no wonder conspiracy theories abound, since so much of what we were told was outright BS. It is easy to make the logical leap and realize that if X and Y were lies, maybe we shouldn’t trust Z. Was it Lee Harvey Oswald? Did they really land on the moon? Etc. Etc.
As the boomers grew up, most of them also outgrew their naive willingness to believe utter crap. It’s hard to not trust anyone over 30 when you are in your 60s.
However, many prominent boomers remember clearly the fame and sometimes fortune they had when they were younger and the world was more gullible. So tie in a “GLOBAL THREAT” to a built-in target audience already willing to embrace anything “eco” or “green”, in spite of the fact that most of these “eco” and “green” groups do FAR more harm than good, and you can skim a lot of cash. Who cares about the consequences? I got mine.
And hey, is it coincidence that the people driving this short bus are boomers? Gore, Hansen, make the list, check what they were doing during the Summer of Love.
Hit the buzz words and you can convince a majority of anything. It’s for the children. Save the animals. Save a particular cute type of animal, that’s more effective. These people believe it is okay to deliberately lie and exaggerate to force others to their will, and even when it is revealed that this is their plan, the gullibles still want to believe.
What I find most amusing is the sheer quantity of willing accomplices they have convinced, willing to do battle against those who have seen through the charade. No, not every scientist doing AGW research is “fraudulent”, and many of them probably fervently believe in what they are doing. But if you go in search of something, you won’t stop until you find it (lesson from the Holy Grail). It’s easy to discount evidence that what you are seeking does not exist when you are completely convinced it does.
And some of those folks around in the 70’s were sidetracked by ‘other’ things, like Saturday Night Fever. Not everyone paid attention to the fantastic picutures coming in from Pioneer, Voyager etc., so it is not surprising if folks who enjoyed the warmer climates paid little attention to the coming Ice Age hyperbola. In the West, we actually did have a drought. The weather forecast was sickeningly monotonous: “Fair through Doomsday”. It was short lived, and so was the Ice Age Warning that couldn’t deliver the Beef.
I like the WUWT comment at the start
” I respect Steigerwald, precisely because he goes to the trouble of calling up people and asking questions directly. ”
Unlike Mr Will of course 😉
Regards
Andy
John Laidlaw (16:57:56) :
contra
sod (14:40:45) :
“Thanks for that sod. Unfortunately it’s not “hard data”, it’s an opinion piece.”
John must have missed the graphs, tables & “hard numbers” clearly showing the preponderence of studies on warming – not cooling – from 1965-1979. Granted, especially given that William Connelly, Wikipedia’s AGW Gatekeeper, was one of the authors, there could have been some cherrypicking; but on the face of it, the article is pretty convincing (and I too lived through & remember the cooling scare of the mid-70’s; but what I remember was exclusively in the popular press – I didn’t read scientific publications back then).
So unless someone can show evidence of bias in the article & produce some “hard” evidence that climate scientists are simply Blowin’ in the Wind, I’m prepared to concede the point: The so-called Scientific Consensus on Global Cooling was a media-fabricated myth.
And for the record, I am firmly in the “unconvinced” camp when it comes to AGW.
“The so-called Scientific Consensus on Global Cooling was a media-fabricated myth.”
That may well be true, but there really was a cooling scare. I also believe there is a warming scare happening now.
Is there a scientific consensus for catastrophic global warming now? I will believe there is when every science organization has a secret ballot of their members, and more than 80% of their members agree that Global warming is caused by man and will cause catastrophe within twenty years. Otherwise it’s just another scare like every other scare… with more money at stake.
The so-called Scientific Consensus on AGW may well be another media-fabricated myth. Where’s the beef?
PaddikJ (00:18:36) :
Actually I didn’t miss them – I just took into account the journalistic style of the article (it starts with a two-word sentence, “The myth.”), the fact that on page 6 under the heading “Popular Literature of the Era”, the opening sentence starts, “There are too many potential newspaper articles to adequately assess…”, and the fact that William M. Connolley is an author, is enough to say “trust this only after you’ve checked every single fact, figure and citation”. The graphs, tables and citations do indeed exist and are consistent with each other – one would expect nothing less – but this does not mean they are exhaustive, accurate, or actually say what the article infers they do.
This is an article from (at least partly) an author who has no problem presenting a slanted and misrepresentative view on the world in order to advance his own agenda… just like the rest of us, eh? :). But, he is a politician… failed, but still a politician. And yes, I do know he’s a Ph.D. He has also gained a reputation for being intractable and invariant in his views, and will shout down any who disagrees even slightly with those views. He is, I believe, attempting to rewrite history to suit his purpose, in much the same way that others attempted to expunge the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.
So, no, I didn’t miss the ‘graphs, tables & “hard numbers”’, I just didn’t accept them blindly.
I think that what Sod and Tenney are arguing is that GLOBAL sea ice is meaningless. This follows the typical warmist meme of cherry picking. The Antarctic ice is growing? It’s “climacticly isolated”. The arctic ice is shrinking? It’s the “canary in the coal mine ” for AGW.
this is false.
there is a big difference, between the northern and the southern hemisphere. the south has more water, and reacts differently to warming.
the important part of sea ice, is summer ice. looking at GLOBAL levels is useless, because you always have one part in summer and one in winter size.
the norths shows a significant downward trend. as predicted by the models.
sod,
I clearly recall the incessant hand-wringing in the media during the 1970’s over the global cooling scare. Stories were everywhere: radio, TV, newspapers and magazines. It was like today’s global warming scare, only back then the scare was over global cooling.
The paper by Connolley, et al is bogus. The authors use an extremely subjective term — “implying” — when counting whether a media report was about warming or cooling. ‘Implying’ can mean just about anything the authors want it to mean. They extrapolate from their own count of their implied articles, and tally the results.
Then they excuse their shoddy and biased research by stating:
So they picked the media reports that they wanted to pick.
Note that one of the authors is a journalist. Any scribbler worth his salt has the resources to research every article on global cooling and global warming printed at the time in question. Claiming that there are ‘too many articles to adequately assess’ is hogwash. They picked what they wanted, and discarded the inconvenient articles.
It’s no secret that William Connolley has an axe to grind; an AGW agenda to promote. He promotes it heavily. Please don’t try to deny that obvious fact. And Connolley wouldn’t co-sign a paper with people he disagrees with, so they are all tainted from feeding at the same trough.
Just because something has a .pdf appended doesn’t mean it’s not intended to be propaganda.
Anybody familiar with the 1980’s nuclear freeze crowd and the West Germans ‘Greens’? These ‘enviro’ groups were heavily funded and supported by the former Soviet Union.
I remember it quite well. Being a teenager at the time, my response to an impending ice age was ‘cool‘!
We didn’t have the World Wide Web in those days, or other alternate media. The media then was all over the threats of a new ice age, but this was quickly forgotten after a few years and some other ‘crisis’ was found. (I believe it was ‘nuclear winter’ that next came to forefront.)
We are far more likely to be destroyed by what we don’t know about than what we do know about. Particularly when we pretend that we do know all about what we don’t know about.
I recently watched “Expelled” by Ben Stein. Although the subject of that film has nothing to do with AGW, it’s amazing the similarities in tactics that are used to silence voices that do not adhere to the approved dogma.
I also ran across an interesting quote in a book that is repected in some circles over the weekend:
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called
1 Timothy 6:20 (King James Version)