In this week's cover story, Newsweek's Sharon Begley seems to think Al Gore's new book is good--but he's still too wonky:

To anyone with bad memories of how Gore's fact-filled debate performances against George W. Bush in 2000 failed to connect with voters, it may come as no surprise that Our Choice has a graphic on "how a wind turbine works," and a long section that begins: "Conventional hydrothermal plants are built according to one of three different designs. The steam can be taken directly through the turbine and then recondensed...."

A wind turbine GRAPHIC! In a book about green energy!? What on Earth was he thinking.

As to our memories of those 2000 debates, maybe Begley meant to type "reporters" instead of "voters." As Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler has been doggedly remembering for years now,  actual voters seemed to think Gore did pretty well in those debates--"instant polls of viewers credited Gore with a rather decisive win." The media created a different narrative--one of a petulant and sighing Gore who couldn't behave himself. And that's the way that they want everyone else to remember it.

Fans of Freakonomics economist Steven Levitt (and his journalistic partner, Stephen Dubner) might well have been surprised to hear about Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm's devastating debunking (10/12/09) of the climate change nonsense in the duo's new book, Superfreakonomics. Romm points out wacky assertions in the bestselling authors' sequel, like this passage they quote approvingly from former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold:

The problem with solar cells is that they're black, because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12 percent gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat--which contributed to global warming.

It's as if the premise of solar panels is that they don't absorb as much heat from the Sun as coal-burning plants, and Myhrvold has discovered that because they're black (actually, they're usually blue) this won't work. In reality, of course, the actual advantage of solar panels over coal-burning plants is that they don't burn coal.

That's a kooky thing to put in a book. But even worse is Levitt and Dubner's misrepresentation of actual climate scientist Ken Caldeira, of whom the authors say, "His research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight" (against global warming). Caldeira actually calls for outlawing devices that release carbon into the atmosphere, saying: "I compare CO2 emissions to mugging little old ladies.... It is wrong to mug little old ladies and wrong to emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The right target for both mugging little old ladies and carbon dioxide emissions is zero."

It's surprising that bestselling authors who have written regularly for the New York Times Magazine would get a story so ridiculously wrong--but maybe it shouldn't be. When the original Freakonomics came out, University of Michigan economist John DiNardo wrote a review (American Law and Economics Review, Fall/06) that pointed out that the book misrepresented a study that was cited as substantiation for one of Levitt's more controversial claims: that legalizing abortion led to lower crime rates. Citing a study by Cristian Pop-Eleches of children born after Romania banned abortion, Levitt and Dubner wrote:

Compared to Romanian children born just a year earlier, the cohort of children born after the abortion ban would do worse in every measurable way: they would test lower in school, they would have less success in the labor market, and they would also prove much more likely to become criminals.

But in the actual study cited by Freakonomics, Pop-Eleches wrote:

On average, children born in 1967 just after abortions became illegal display better educational and labor market achievements than children born just prior to the change. This outcome can be explained by a change in the composition of women having children: urban, educated women were more likely to have abortions prior to the policy change, so a higher proportion of children were born into urban, educated households.

DiNardo has pointed out (though he does not do so in the version published in the American Law and Economics Review) that Pop-Eleches found that if you correct for demographic characteristics, children born after the abortion ban did less well than those born before, but this is very different from saying that the cohort did worse; DiNardo noted (quoting Pop-Eleches) that the study indicated that "the positive effect due to changes in the composition of mothers having children more than outweighs all the other negative effects that such a restriction might have had."

Levitt actually responded to diNardo's criticism in a snide blog post (Freakonomics blog, 2/6/08), which quoted Freakonomics' claim about the cohort doing worse, quoted Pop-Eleches' finding about outcomes after "controlling for...observable background variables," then deceptively concluded, "Sounds to me like Freakonomics and Pop-Eleches are saying the same thing"--ignoring the part where Pop-Eleches found that the cohort actually did better, thus giving readers no clue as to what DiNardo's actual complaint about Levitt's use of the paper was. ("C'mon, John, you're a top economist, and our book is 300 pages long. You must have better criticisms than that!" Levitt snarked. Well, yeah--most criticism sounds better when you actually explain it.)

This dishonest response to criticism foreshadowed Levitt's similarly slippery response (Freakonomics blog, 10/17/09) to Joe Romm's critique--see Climate Progress, 10/17/09. Maybe the climate change chapter from Superfreakonomics isn't an aberration--maybe people are just catching on to Levitt's smartest-guy-in-the-room act.

The Drudge Report (9/16/09) is featuring this headline (in scary red type):

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year...

The link goes to a CBSNews.com post, which declares:

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

Well, there's one problem: $1,700 is the upper estimate. The second, far more important problem: This was an analysis based on a plan that called for auctioning all of the carbon-burning permits; the bill that passed the House auctions just 15 percent of the permits, meaning that this document (FOIAed by the corporate-friendly Competitive Enterprise Institute) bears almost no relationship to reality.

The CBS report has an "update" at the bottom of the piece, from the kind of people CBS didn't bother to quote (preferring the likes of the Heritage Foundation and CEI, staunch critics of cap-and-trade):

Update 9/16/2009: The Environmental Defense Fund has responded to the documents' release with a statement saying, in part:

"Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers. It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.

"The bill passed by the House sends the value of pollution permits to consumers, and it contains robust cost-containment provisions. Every credible and independent economic analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (such as those done by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency) says the costs will be small and affordable -- and that the U.S. economy will grow with a cap on carbon."

That is kind of like saying "IGNORE THE PRECEDING REPORT."

The Politico had a brief story on this as well by Ben Smith--not nearly as bad as CBS's-- that also included a late correction:

CORRECTION: The League of Conservation Voters' Navin Nayak points out to me that the documents are a bit less than meets the eye: They refer to a version of the legislation profoundly different than the one that passed. Specifically, the original White House plan had 100 percent of emissions permits being distributed by auction; the plan that passed has just 15 percent.  "Can you say 'irrelevant analysis'? It would be like pricing the healthcare bills currently in front of Congress based on a single-payer system," he writes.

He also notes that the revenue comes directly from polluters, not taxpayers, and continues (and I'm quoting him at length because my original post was sloppy):

"Why not use the CBO analysis of the house bill? Republicans seem more than happy to use CBO when it helps their case (i.e. Against some of the health care bills). But CBO said that ACES would only cost a postage stamp a day per household...in 2020."

So the scary-sounding statistic is nonsense. Nonetheless, one can expect to hear this "It will cost you $1,700!" factoid all the time.

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz (9/14/09) writes of the Van Jones controversy, in which Fox News' Glenn Beck took credit for the resignation of a White House staffer:

In the Jones case, there is little question that the traditional media botched the story of an Obama administration official who, wittingly or otherwise, lent his name to those who believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deliberately allowed thousands of Americans to be slaughtered. Some conservatives accused journalists of liberal bias; it is just as likely that their radar malfunctioned, or that they collectively dismissed Beck as a rabble-rouser.

Kurtz presented his evidence:

By the time White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned over Labor Day weekend, the New York Times had not run a single story. Neither had USA Today, which also didn't cover the resignation. The Washington Post had done one piece, on the day before he quit. The Los Angeles Times had carried a short article the previous week questioning Glenn Beck's assault on the White House aide. There had been nothing on the network newscasts.

Kurtz's piece concluded: "The followup news pieces focused on the administration's failure to vet Jones' background. Perhaps the media bloodhounds should be just as curious why they failed to sniff out a story that ended with a White House resignation."

Well, if that's the question they're going to be asking themselves, they'll have to start by figuring out why they paid so little attention to Philip Cooney. Who, you might well ask?  In the Bush II administration, Cooney was chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, the same rather obscure White House office to which Jones was a special adviser; in other words, he was a higher-ranking official than Jones. Cooney, a former oil industry advocate, resigned in 2005 after a New York Times expose (6/8/05) charged him with editing climate-change reports to make them more industry-friendly. That is, he was accused of actual malfeasance in office, on a matter of global consequence, rather than of holding objectionable opinions unrelated to his job. Cooney almost immediately got a job with ExxonMobil, giving the story a newsworthy whiff of corruption.

The New York Times, which broke the story, ran a total of five news stories on it and four editorials.  The Washington Post had one editorial (6/11/05) that mentioned Cooney in passing before his resignation, and one news story (6/15/05) on his new oil industry job, along with three opinion pieces that referenced the controversy; Cooney's name also came up in a news story (8/5/05) about Exxon Mobil more than a month later.  USA Today (6/15/05) mentioned him in an editorial after the resignation, but had no news coverage. The L.A. Times had a news brief (6/15/05) after the resignation, and later dropped Cooney's name in an editorial (6/19/05) and an op-ed (6/24/05).

CBS TV didn't mention Cooney in all of 2005, according to Nexis transcripts; nor did ABC.  NBC Nightly News (6/8/05, 6/11/05) ran two pieces on the subject, and Tim Russert (6/19/05) brought him up in an interview with John McCain. ("I'm shocked," was McCain's response.) CNN mentioned the Bush official three times, while he came up once on MSNBC's Countdown (6/16/05). Cooney doesn't come up at all in Fox News' Nexis transcripts, an omission that leaves me feeling as shocked as John McCain.

Note that almost all of what little coverage there was appeared after Cooney resigned--so evidently these outlets did not find documented evidence that a Bush administration official was altering scientific documents to benefit his corporate pals to be newsworthy in itself. Yet conspicuously absent from the Cooney story was any complaining by Howard Kurtz about the paucity of coverage.

Stating quite succinctly how "there is an ongoing issue about whether global warming deniers should be treated seriously by the media, given that they have about as much scientific support for their position as the flat-Earth crew," economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 7/11/09) notes how the July 11 "New York Times goes them one better in finding a global warming ignorer":

Apparently, Ben Stein has never heard about global warming. How else can someone interpret this paragraph:

I don't believe we need to do something radical about energy, but even assuming that we do, why do it right now? Do we need to take one of the few sectors that is working like clockwork through the recession--oil refining--and wring its neck by making it pay for pollution "cap and trade" credits? Why attack a healthy industry when so many other sectors are ill? What is all of this anger at Big Oil, which has not done anything blameworthy, all about? Why endlessly beat up the companies that keep the country going?

He then goes on to complain about the Obama administration's efforts to change the laws on foreclosures. This would be a good idea, except the Obama administration is not working to change the laws on foreclosure.

Baker explains that "Stein is opposed to this plan because he is worried that it will further discourage mortgage lending," even though "there is no problem of mortgage lending at present. Mortgage rates are near historic lows and the Mortgage Bankers Association applications index indicates that few people are having trouble getting mortgages." Baker is impressed with how, "once again, Ben Stein distinguishes himself by how many things he can get really seriously wrong in a relatively short column."

Reacting to media noise over the economic costs of the Waxman-Markey environmental bill currently before the U.S. Congress, Dean Baker (ZNet, 7/1/09) looks to the damages of a different annual spending bill, this one perpetually unexamined in corporate news:

Global Insight projected that after 20 years of higher defense spending, annual car sales would be down by more than 700,000. Housing starts would be almost 40,000 lower. Exports would be 1.8 percent lower and imports would be 2.7 percent higher, leading to a trade deficit that was almost $200 billion larger. The model also projected that there would be nearly 700,000 fewer jobs as a result of the higher level of defense spending.

In short, the economic harm projected from high levels of military spending is far larger than the damage projected from the Waxman-Markey bill. Given this situation, we should expect that all the oil and coal industry folks who are now so concerned about the average family's well-being would have been screaming about the economic pain that would result from sustaining the Iraq War levels of military spending.

Did anyone ever hear them raise this issue? Does anyone recall members of Congress giving speeches about how the job loss from the Iraq War levels of spending will be devastating? Does anyone recall any newspaper columns or editorials making this point? How about a news story that analyzed the economic impact of higher levels of military spending?

"For some reason," Baker says, "job loss and economic pain associated with the military are just not worth mentioning. These items only become newsworthy when the issue is saving the environment." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Miriam Pemberton on Military Budget" (4/17/09).

Tying the urgent present-day topic of economic reporting in with the most pressing global emergency of climate change, Dean Baker has posted at his Beat the Press blog (6/29/09) on "What Does 'Free Trade' Have to Do With Taxing Greenhouse Gas Emissions?":

That is the question that the New York Times should have been asking in an article that reported President Obama's opposition to taxing imported items from countries that have not taken steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The point of his cap-and-trade program is to make items that require large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions more expensive, thereby discouraging their consumption.

If goods can just be imported from countries that have no tax on GHG, then the point of cap-and-trade is undermined, as goods that require large amounts of fossil fuels will just be produced abroad. It is understandable that importers and other special interest would be opposed to measures that prohibit this sort of evasion, but that has absolutely nothing to do with "free trade."

Baker notes that "the NYT completely misrepresents the issue by implying that this is somehow a debate over principles of free trade," when really "it is a debate of whether special interests will be allowed to import goods to undermine the limits set by a cap-and-trade bill for GHG emissions." For more on press distortions of Obama's cap-and-trade policies, listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Mike Lillis on Climate Bill" (5/22/09).

Activist David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet.org, 6/24/09) has some problems with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's and Congressmember Tom Perriello's recent visit "generating a story and big color photo on page 1 of the Charlottesville Daily Progress" under the headline "In UVa Visit, Democrats Call Deficit Reckless":

The newspaper reported on Congressman Perriello warning that he could not vote for healthcare without a way to pay for it. There was no mention of the fact that the previous week, the day before Hoyer introduced his bill to fight deficits, both of these gentlemen had voted to spend another $97 billion on wars and to loan $100 billion to European bankers through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nobody in Washington had even hinted at where any of that money would come from, and apparently Hoyer and Perriello didn't care.

The article did include a quote from a Republican blaming Democrats for deficits. But that's doubly bad reporting. Republicans have pushed deficits up far more than Democrats, and just getting a haphazard (and inaccurate) quote from "the other side" misses the relevant context of the war supplemental vote. Here's the patently false quote from Congressman Eric Cantor: "We've amassed more debt over the last five months than this country has amassed in the last 200 years."

Swanson sees another example of this kind of overwhelmingly uncritical coverage in the same day's visit by "two top environmental officials from the White House": "Oddly, there was no particular news to announce at the press conference. Predictably, all the media outlets were there to trumpet the story anyway." Listen to Swanson on FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "David Swanson on 'Benchmarks'" (5/18/07).

Writing for CJR.org (6/16/09), Media Bloodhound blogger Brad Jacobson finds that "former CNN correspondent-turned-PR consultant Gene Randall's video 'report' for oil giant Chevron might be unprecedented for how it blurred the line between public relations and journalism," but is still more worried that "the Randall/Chevron production raises not only ethical questions, but also the question of whether a surge of newly pink-slipped reporters might go, as one media critic put it, 'over to the dark side,' and how that might further muddy the line between news and corporate advocacy":

As detailed in a recent New York Times article, when Chevron, America's third-largest corporation, heard that 60 Minutes was preparing a report about the $27 billion lawsuit filed against it for allegedly contaminating the Ecuador region of the Amazon rain forest, Chevron hired former TV newsman Randall to craft a video from the corporation's perspective, which was posted on YouTube and Chevron's website three weeks before the 60 Minutes report aired on May 3.

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley's investigation presented multiple perspectives, while Randall's included only Chevron officials and consultants. Everyone interviewed in Randall's piece, in other words, was paid by Chevron, including Randall himself.

While "Randall's video also clearly strives to resemble an authentic news report, employing classic stylistic TV news techniques, while never informing the viewer it's a Chevron production," what Jacobson considers "most deceptive" is that "Randall--looking like the consummate TV newsman--begins the video with the accompanying graphic 'Gene Randall Reporting' and concludes with the voiceover: 'This is Gene Randall reporting.'"

Veteran actor and activist Peter Coyote (SFChronicle.com, 5/30/09) writes about big media's overriding response to the "Largest Environmental Lawsuit in History--Silence." Taking a look at "the practices that are going on behind Chevron's carefully cultivated 'green' image" as they "drill for oil in the jungles of the Ecuadorian Amazon," Coyote does give credit to the Washington Post reporting of "several damning letters" like "an internal 1972 memo...instructing Texaco [now Chevron] officials in Ecuador to report only spills that attracted the attention of the news media." Nonetheless:

This is a case of epic proportions, where our commons, the lungs of the planet, have been violated needlessly and carelessly, to save money with no thought whatsoever paid to the thousands of people, and millions of species, that would be poisoned while the American media basically slept. Those of you who may have noticed the cozy interview with the [executive vice] president of Chevron in the SF Chronicle last week might not have noticed the small article in the Chronicle's business section mentioning the protests outside of the Chevron stockholders meeting in San Ramon on May 26. Cofan Indian leader Ermenegildo Quillolo, and lead-American attorney for the defense Steve Danziger, Ecuadorian community organizer Luis Yanza, members of Amazon Watch and a host of NGOs seeking to protect the Amazon were there protesting the actions of Chevron, and alerting stockholders that their company paid $30 billion dollars for a company with $27 billion dollars of liabilities attached, a gross failure of due diligence. We, the public, were not offered a comparable interview with the Ecuadorians, Steven Danziger or members of Amazon Watch.

Even though "this spill dwarfs the Exxon Valdez," Coyote notes that it, "aside from an excellent piece on 60 Minutes, remains virtually unreported. How many of you know about it? And if not, why not?" Listen to a similar story of oil company crimes and media neglect on the current FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Han Shan on Shell & Ken Saro-Wiwa" (5/29/09).

Jonathan Hiskes of Grist--who recently exposed "The NYT's Favorite 'Climate Change Denier'"--has now (5/13/09) caught Fox News giving airtime to Marc Morano's charge of Al Gore "profiting off global warming campaign" :

Say you're a harried cable news producer with 24 gaping hours to fill with finished material every day of the week. Say you're constantly in need of articulate guests to offer a diversity of viewpoints. How do you do it?

One way is to take up offers like this one from the PR folks representing Marc Morano. Refresher: Morano was formerly an aid to climate-change-denier-in-chief James Inhofe (GOP senator from Oklahoma), now heads misinformation clearinghouse ClimateDepot.com, and is still the chief supplier of talking points to the climate-denial camp.

Hiskes' quotes from the PR release are enlightening for how skillfully they play into the false balance so key to corporate reportage:

Here’s your anti-Gore Global Warming Expert who offers the science to counteract partisan and ideologically driven Environmental entities and issues....

If you believe most, or all, of the global warming dogma, you may use Marc as your "counter guest" to offer a lively, fair and balanced discussion to your audience. If you are a skeptic of the current doctrine, Marc can aid your program by clearing up the deception with the facts.

The really troubling part comes in the release's list of news organizations that have fallen for this nonsense, boasting that Morano "has made international news" on "CNN, Fox News Channel's the O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes, BBC TV, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post."

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: Creating Controversy Where Science Finds Consensus" (11-12/04) by Jules Boykoff and Maxwell Boykoff

During his regular review of scientific reporting for the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, Boyce Rensberger describes (5/7/09) how the "11-year (give or take) sunspot cycle, associated with a periodic reversal in the sun’s magnetic poles" means that "the number of sunspots increases in the years just before a reversal." But Rensberger notes that "Where are we now?" depends on "Who you gonna read?":

The Christian Science Monitor says the next reversal, expected in 2012, could be associated with an unusual number of sunspots and solar flares. Those flares send out barrages of charged particles that can cause problems on Earth. The story carries this hed: "Solar Storms Ahead: Is Earth Prepared? / Sunspot Cycle Beginning in 2012 May Put Satellites, Power Grids at Risk." The story, by James Turner, focuses strongly on the threat of coming solar storms.

But over at the National Geographic, a different story. Anne Minard writes about a “prolonged lull in solar activity” (the recent absence of sunspots has gone on longer than expected) and whether it might bring another “little ice age.” Minard writes: "The sun is the least active it's been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years." She goes on to talk about the past little ice age during the sun's so-called Maunder minimum, when Europe saw harsher than average winters. She does include scientists' belief that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since then would swamp any solar-forced cooling.

Meanwhile, almost inevitably, into this otherwise reasoned debate wades a less-than-scientific outlet reaching its own conclusions: "Fox News, predictably, notes the Geographic story and plugs it with this hed: 'Quiet Sun May Trigger Global Cooling.'"

New York Times editorialist Lawrence Downes (5/4/09) has some good questions about Pete Seeger's big 90th birthday party. The broadcast surely is bound to "be a PBS special made in pledge-week heaven," but Downes has to "wonder, though, how many of the angry moments will survive":

Will we hear the Native American musicians pleading for support in their battle with Peabody Energy? Peabody is a giant strip-mining company that has been at the center of lawsuits by Southwestern tribes over drinking water and income from mineral rights.

Will we hear the praise for the Clean Water Act of 1972, or the acid remark from one of the Indians: "Ever since that man by the name of Hudson went up that river, it's gone to hell."

The evening was, after all, a benefit for Clearwater, the name of an organization and a boat, both built by Mr. Seeger, that have fought for decades to rescue the Hudson River from life as an industrial sewer. The job isn’t done. Remember PCBs? General Electric dumped tons of them in the river. The company is about ready to dredge them out, but for now they are still there, seeping downriver and into fish.

Some insight into the priorities likely to hold sway in PBS's editing process may be gleaned from the "public" network's long-standing close relationship with at least one major sponsor... General Electric.

An April 24 New York Times op-ed from "Skeptical Environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg contends "that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a hopeless cause and that public money is better spent on research and development of renewable energy"--which Jonathan Hiskes of Grist calls (4/27/09) "a classic Lomborg argument--deliberately provocative and presenting several worthy goals as an either/or choice. Choose either emissions caps or R&D, he proposes. You can't have both." Pointing out that Lomborg "makes no mention of the tremendous potential that carbon regulation has to raise money for clean energy R&D," Hiskes gives us some background:

Lomborg made his name in 2001 by publishing The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, a 540-page attack on conventional green wisdom. It suggested that supposed environmental crises--including global warming--were "phantom problems" drummed up by the environmental old guard to serve its own ends. That prompted Grist to respond with A skeptical look at The Skeptical Environmentalist, a special series in which experts scrutinized Lomborg's claims in their fields.

Did much debunkery ensue? Oh yes it did. Nobel-winning Climatologist Stephen Schneider exposed Lomborg's selective use of statistics in his climate analysis. Energy expert David Nemtzow called out Lomborg for knocking down a straw man of fossil fuel scarcity. Biologist E.O. Wilson blasted holes in Lomborg's "stop worrying" analysis of species extinction. And more.

As Schneider complained eight years ago, the most vexing question might be how Lomborg keeps getting such high-profile attention. And that prompts a question about the New York Times' rationale for going to Lomborg for this essay. He is, basically, a climate change denier. Granting him space on the NYT op-ed page is yet another example of the media treating a scientific matter as just another political topic fit for debate.

By way of comparison, Hiskes "wonders, would they grant the same privilege to the wackos who think HIV doesn’t cause AIDS?"

Is it possible for the Washington Post to be embarrassed by George Will? After a series of erroneous claims in a column about climate change, Will is at it again today (4/2/09), laughing off the use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs as a poor fix for a nonexistent problem:

Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, which is allegedly occurring even though, according to statistics published by the World Meteorological Organization, there has not been a warmer year on record than 1998.

Sigh.

This has been explained before; Will cherry picks the hottest year among other relatively hot years as his starting point. The 11 hottest years in the past century and half have all occurred in the last 13 years--but 1998 was the hottest year so far, so there's no such thing as global warming.

What's perhaps most interesting is that the Post ran a long letter (3/21/09) from the secretary General of the World Meteorological Association, spelling this out and explaining that Will just doesn't know what he's talking about:

It is a misinterpretation of the data and of scientific knowledge to point to one year as the warmest on record -- as was done in a recent Post column ["Dark Green Doomsayers," George F. Will, op-ed, February 15] -- and then to extrapolate that cooler subsequent years invalidate the reality of global warming and its effects.

The difference between climate variability and climate change is critical, not just for scientists or those engaging in policy debates about warming. Just as one cold snap does not change the global warming trend, one heat wave does not reinforce it. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit.

At this point it's obvious that George Will is not going to let a bunch of scientists tell him about climate science.  The real question is why the Post continues to print this stuff-- and give him cover when critics point out his inaccuracies.

The paper, it should be noted, did run a recent op-ed from Chris Mooney debunking some of Will's climate misinformation. But Will will still have his regular platform to write whatever he wants to write about climate science--no matter how wrong he is.