In the Washington Post’s game of global warming coverage, George Will gets seven strikes and he’s still not out. Will has penned yet another column questioning climate science, the seventh this year. Will’s thesis is that there has been no global warming since 1998, based on his misinterpretation of a poorly written article about temperature trends by New York Times climate reporter Andy Revkin:
By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere “plateau,” not warming’s apogee, the Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume.
By this logic, we’d have to conclude that the Toronto Blue Jays just clinched the A.L. East division title — after all, they’ve won six games in a row and are 9–1 in their last ten games, while the New York Yankees lost their last game and are only 7–3. (In reality, the Yankees have clinched the division title.) However, when ThinkProgress contacted Will to confirm this theory, he responded:
You don’t seem to understand baseball. The Blue Jays are not even in contention.
Will’s persistent assertion that global warming has stopped during the hottest decade in recorded history is just as nonsensical as the idea that a team that is nine games below .500 is beating one that is 45 games above .500. Unfortunately, Will hung up before we could ask who he believed was the hottest team in baseball.
The Wonk Room has more.
Update:
Matt Yglesias looks at the Washington Post’s continuing contempt for its readers, noting, “But one is once again left with the profound crisis facing the employees of the Washington Post. Simply put, they all work for an institution that seems utterly indifferent to whether the people who write for the paper are informing the readers or deliberately trying to mislead them. That hurts their credibility, each and every one of them.”