In a typical profanity laced diatribe, the Daily Kos accuses George Will of lying or ignorance, fielder’s choice:
George Will — “According to the University of Illinois’ ACRC, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.”
University of Illinois’ ACRC — “We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows … [the] 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.”
This is a reference to a column in the Washington Post by George Will.
And despite all the eco-pagan handwringing, wailing and nashing of teeth, it appears that Will was correct, and the ACRC was engaged in a certain amount of spin in its disingenuous statement.
It’s got to be tough when the public spokesperson for the ACRC can’t read a graph. Check it out yourself: you’ll see the values go up, and the values go down, but they consistently orbit around the same general center.
I share one bit of frustration with the Daily Kos, though for different reasons. I wish WAPO would respond a bit more vigorously to false allegations when it’s one of their few conservative columnists being attacked. But, for now, I guess this will have to do.
The University of Illinois center that Will cited has now said it doesn’t agree with his conclusion, but earlier this year it put out a statement
(http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf)
that was among several sources for this column and that notes in part that “Observed global sea ice area, defined here as a sum of N. Hemisphere and S. Hemisphere sea ice areas, is near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979,”
It would seem that ACRC’s spokesperson doesn’t read their own website. And it would seem that the eco-pagan global warming panic-mongers simply believe spokespersons without checking the facts themselves… which makes it especially funny that they accuse George Will and WAPO of not doing adequate fact checking.
