“Dark Green Doomsayers” by columnist George Will in the February 15 Washington Post shows that the global warming disinformation campaign is alive, if not particularly well.

Post by Rick Piltz

I e-mailed the following note to Will.  The first item I suggested he read is from today’s Washington Post and provides a striking, one might say alarming, counterpoint to Will’s evasions.  The second is a take-down by Joe Romm on his great Climate Progress blog (Joe, I only would have substituted the visage of Alfred E. Newman—What, Me Worry?—for the hapless Alfalfa).  The third is an article from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that should have, but apparently has not, laid to rest the denialist myth of the 1970s global cooling scientific consensus.
 

February 15, 2008

Mr. Will—

Please take a look at the following—just a few items to help set the record straight on your “Dark Green Doomsayers” column in the Washington Post today.

“Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates” (Washington Post, Feb. 15, p. A3)

“Is George Will the Most Ignorant National Columnist?” (Joe Romm, Climate Progress, Feb. 15)

“The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus” (Peterson, et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Sept. 2008)

I believe your column today was an egregious example of the global warming disinformation campaign in action.  You do a disservice to public discourse when you publish material of such sophistry that fails so completely to come to grips with the great body of evidence and assessment that the climate science community is reporting on human-driven global climatic disruption and its dangerous implications. You really should try to become more scientifically literate on this subject if you intend to keep writing about it.

Rick Piltz
Director, Climate Science Watch
Government Accountability Project
Washington, DC