George Wills Enviro Facts To Meet His Own Reality

George Will is one of the more respected conservative pundits and writers out there. He doesn't come across as shrill very often and would probably get just as nauseous around Ann Coulter as I would. Yet that demeanor does not mean that he isn't immune to that GOP disease of making facts up about global warming that are completely and utterly false.

From TPM Muckraker:

Over the weekend, the Washington Post's George Will, got in on the act. And it took us about ten minutes -- longer, it appears, than the Post's editors spent -- to figure out that Will, like Barnes, was essentially making stuff up.

Both of Will's major "data points" fall apart after a moment's scrutiny.

Here's the first:

According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

But within hours of Will's column appearing, the ACRC had posted the following statement on its website:

We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.

Yeah, I'm with ACRC on that one. George Will doesn't have the best record when it comes to portraying the facts on the issue and the Washington Post should assign an editor and a fact checker to their conservative pundit. Will also tried to smudge the facts on another point in regard to global temperatures, but he cherry-picked the data without taking a look (or avoiding it intentionally) at the mean numbers.

It is sad to see people like this so avidly deny what is staring us all in the face. Global warming is not a partisan issue, it will affect the planet no matter if you are a Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Reform, Green or whatever.