The Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods plus some new ones

[The NYT's Andy Revkin has a very good debunking of Will with detailed comments from leading cryosphere experts, "Experts: Big Flaw in Will's Ice Assertions." Sadly, Andy continues his refusal to correct the harm he did to Gore by equating him with Will. In a day or two, I will attempt to untarnish Gore's reputation to make clear that he did nothing whatsoever wrong -- intentionally or unintentionally -- as opposed to Will who has done multiple things wrong intentionally.]

"When a reputable newspaper lies, it poisons the community; every newspaper story becomes suspect," declared a New York Times editorial. "Great publications magnify the voice of any single writer. Thus, when their editors or publishers want or need to know a source for what they print, they have to know it and be able to assure the community or the courts that they do. Where this is not now the rule, let this sad affair at least have the good effect of making it the rule." That editorial was published on April 17, 1981 about the transgressions of a Washington Post reporter named Janet Cooke [who fabricated a story, which the Post later submitted for a Pulitzer Prize "despite the growing signs of problems" with the story's veracity].

Incomprehensibly, the Washington Post -- after being roundly criticized for having senior editors and fact-checkers (and then their ombudsman!) sign off on (and then defend) George Will's error-riddled global warming column -- has allowed George Will to reassert in a new column (here) that every single one of his falsehoods was factual. [For a point-by-point debunking of the original February 15 piece, see CP and Wonk Room [PDF] and this joint letter to WP].

And in what seems to be Alice-in-Wonderland journalism, a senior editor at the Washington Post now asserts it is perfectly reasonable for a non-scientist Post writer to reinterpret a prestigious source's scientific data to support his or her conclusion -- after those sources have repeatedly stated that their data is consistent with the exact opposite conclusion and without telling readers of that disagreement. And not only did Will do that multiple times in his first piece -- the Post still let him do it again after he was called on it by multiple writers (see Washington Monthly and here).

Much as I would like to spend my time writing about the strategies needed to prevent business-as-usual warming of 5°C to 7°C, both of my parents were award-winning professional journalists, and I think this story is simply too important not to focus a maximum spotlight on.

I will go through Will's new and old falsehoods at length here because, as I noted above, the NYT editorialized on the Post's infamous Janet Cooke scandal, "When a reputable newspaper lies, it poisons the community; every newspaper story becomes suspect." Just as with the Janet Cooke scandal, this is about a major Washington Post writer fabricating and misusing sources.

Media Matters saw Will's column in advance and debunked it here, showing how Will doubled down on his previous global warming distortions and cited a document on sea ice trends as evidence against human-caused global warming when that "document actually states that the sea ice data are consistent with the outcomes projected by climate-change models." And Will cited the U.N. World Meteorological Organization [WMO] -- with no source citation -- saying "there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade," when, as Media Matters showed, as recently as January 7, Agence France-Presse quoted WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud as saying, "The major trend is unmistakably one of warming." I have similar quotes from WMO in my original post.

The abuse of sources in Will's columns -- signed off on and defended by the Post's editors (and ombudsman) should be a cautionary tale equal to the Janet Cooke story. One can only assume, sadly, that given the controversy, Will's new piece was as at least as fact-checked as the original, which, according to the Washington Post ombudsman was "checked by people he [Will] personally employs, as well as two editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors" (see here).

And yet the fact-checkers let through a lie so egregious that it would seem to utterly vitiate the credibility of the Post all by itself. Will was allowed to publish the following statement:

Umbra on smoke detectors

Dear Umbra, How should we safely dispose of old smoke detectors? Don’t they have small amounts of radioactive material in...

Americans' climate change doubts aren't hard to understand

As if in response to David Roberts' point that "[t]here is nothing close to the public or political support necessary to pass the kind of sweeping policies necessary to eliminate America's emissions," Pew is out with a new poll saying just that.

Kevin Drum (via Andy Revkin) has the details:

Global warming, once again, ranks as the lowest priority from a list of 20, and the more general category of "protecting the environment" fell 15 percentage points from last year.

And as if that's not bad enough, Revkin also points to a new Rasmussen poll, which finds that 44% of U.S. voters don't believe humans are the cause of global warming, compared to only 41% who do. That's even worse than last year's results.

Somehow, those numbers don't surprise me. Leaving aside the fact that, thanks to the contingencies of history, the developed world has ended up occupying the parts of the planet likely to be affected least by climate change, the whole phenomenon is too vague and amorphous for most Americans to focus on. It just doesn't feel real to many people. After all, the weather is weird. Sometimes it's warm. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it rains.

In fact, I'm willing to bet the poll numbers for global warming will wax and wane in correlation with the temperature in any given year (just like a president's approval rating correlates pretty well with perceptions about the economy). Is it cold this year? Support will fall. A beastly hot summer? Up go the poll numbers.

Meanwhile, we as a society aren't particularly good with the whole science thing in general. Let's look at some numbers from a National Science Foundation poll back in 2004.

• Only 40% of Americans know that the universe began with the Big Bang.
• Fully half don't believe in evolution (with 1 in 5 entirely "unaware" of the concept at all).
• 58% of Americans think lasers focus sound waves rather than light. Lasers! Didn't these people see Star Wars?!
• And capping it all off: 29% of Americans don't know that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

What part of Americans' confusion regarding anthropogenic climate change is hard to understand? Even the concept of the scientific method is understood by only a fraction of our society. This all is why Joe Romm is running a pool on the nature of the near-term catastrophes required to turn Americans' climate change doubts into certainty.

And, tellingly, the partisan split is huge, with 59% of Democrats saying climate change is caused by humans, while only 21% of Republican agree. And why should they? Climate skepticism has been a cornerstone of Bush Republicanism for eight years -- and so far it looks like many in the GOP will continue to use it as a rallying cry.

If there's any hope in these recent climate poll numbers, it comes from a figure buried in Rasmussen's poll. They found that 64% of American voters believe climate change, whatever the cause, to be at least a "somewhat serious" problem (41% say it's "very serious"). So we may not rank the issue very high at the moment, and we may not be sure why it's happening, but a solid majority of us are ready to be persuaded.

And President Obama has left little doubt that we'll be hearing a lot about climate change in the months and years ahead. If anyone can move public opinion on the issue, it's going to be him, don't you think?

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What can families do to reduce home energy use?

My name is not Earl. I've crossed everything off my list, and I'd like to share what I have learned about home weatherization.

I'll start with my results to date. I spent roughly $400 and achieved a 60 percent reduction in my gas-heating bill for the month of February. That huge reduction is testimony to what an energy hog my house was before I started this project.

My goal is an 80 percent reduction but that last 20 percent isn't going to come easy. To obtain that I will need to install a solar hot water panel in the one sunny patch of yard I have, a heat exchanger on the first floor shower drain, and possibly one of these bad-boy heat pumps. Our hot water accounts for almost 20 percent of our gas use.

Here's my list of weatherized add-ons:

Time to slice up the tomato industry?

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The energy and climate challenge for Obama

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this day.

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The excitement here in D.C. is palpable. We have friends in town who brought their five-year-old and are walking down to the National Mall. My wife got an invitation to watch the whole thing from an office that overlooks the Capitol.

I'm an indoor type (Duh!) -- especially on a cold day with a wind chill that could only warm the hearts of anti-scientific global warming deniers. And someone needs to stay home with my 21-month-old daughter and blog.

She is so excited. She keeps saying "Where is Barack Obama?" and "Is Joe Biden here?" (Note: If you ask her who ran against Barack Obama, she'll answer "Grumpy old man." Go figure!)

So what is the great challenge for Obama?

Global warming, obviously, but what does he need to do?

Yes, he needs to pass a major climate bill and accelerate the deployment of cleantech. But those are really secondary challenges.

No, the single most important thing he needs to do is to change the political equation in this country.

Is Toyota developing a purely solar-powered car?

An AP report is generating headlines around the world:

Toyota Motor Corp. is secretly developing a vehicle that will be powered solely by solar energy ...

According to The Nikkei, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. The automaker later hopes to develop a model totally powered by solar cells on the vehicle, the newspaper said without citing sources.

Getting some electricity from rooftop PV panels isn't news, though it is a good idea, if only a "symbolic gesture" until panel costs drop sharply. (See also Treehugger's "Solar-Powered Toyota Prius Project.")

But there isn't enough rooftop area to run a car solely on rooftop solar cells. I don't see how it would work even for an ultra-lightweight short-range city car with a really big roof area -- an ungainly, unaerodynamic design. And don't forget, cars are often parked inside.