BPSDB George Will has gone Platinum with over 100 articles exposing the lies and errors in his recent climate columns.
Why so much excitement over the Will column? The net is awash with this type of idiocy and even Will himself has done this before.
I think the issue is not that Will tries to pass off climate change Denier nonsense as fact. It’s that the attempt to mislead is so juvenile and transparent that it boggles the mind and insults the reader. People do not necessarily expect George Will to tell the truth, but to attempt to mislead them while insulting their intelligence is unforgivable.
For those unfamiliar with the fraud in question, the main one is easily explained in this short video Ice Area vs Volume:
as well as here Is the Cryosphere Crying Wolf? What Arctic sea-ice levels can tell us about global warming, here Twits and ASS at the Daily Dreck and of course at most of the links given below.
It is one thing when this is done by a nobody like Asher and Co. in the Denialosphere. It’s pretty much what you expect from that quarter, in the same way that it’s a given that supermarket tabloids report on Elvis’s three headed alien love child.
It’s quite another when committed by someone of Will’s stature in the Washington Post. Apparently the Washington Post has more than a few readers with some intelligence, and they expect at least the illusion of respect for it.
I have only two more things to add to the furor:
1) I propose the George F. Will Platinum Award,
to be given for egregious idiocy underneath and below the accepted standards of climate change denial stupidity, from a source that generally makes some minimal attempt to maintain the pretense of accuracy, rationality and intelligence.
Granted there are some fine climate change Denier idiocy awards already, such as:
but I believe that Will has not only set a new sub-standard, he is a pioneer for fearlessly championing a pathetic and obvious fraud in a venue where even the copy boy would immediately spot it as moronic bunk, and be filled with contempt for the lack of standards, ethics or integrity.
It takes a lot of something to go so far beyond the pale on absolutely nothing, with no hope that it could ever be taken seriously, and I believe it deserves to be recognized.
2) Over at Get Energy Smart Now Andrew Siegel is
“…struggling to keep up” with annotated links about the Will debacle. I’ve stopped even trying.
I offer nothing more than an alabetical collection of the testament to travesty, mainly to document Will’s worthiness of special status in a field already rich in idiocy and charlatans.
If I have missed any please advise me and I will add them.
- A furious assault in the blogosphere, by the big media guns of climate change worry, on George Will
- A Problem for Everyone Who Works for the Washington Post
- A Suggested Correction For Will’s ‘Dark Green Doomsayers’ Column
- A Wrinkle In Ice (or Not)
- And the Kick Line Continues…George Will is a Glutton for Punishment edition
- Attack of the zombies: global cooling!
- BAD WILL HUNTING….
- Can George Will Save The “Global Cooling” Myth? Uh, No.
- Challenging George Will’s Reign of Error
- Checking George Will: The Perils of Time Travel
- Cherry-Picked Facts Heat Up Climate Debate
- Chilly Willy
- CLIMATE CHANGE: Conservative pundit George Will asserts false claims to make anti-climate change arguments in Washington Post column
- Climate Change’s Myths and Facts
- Climate of Denial
- Dam breaks: George Will lampooned by Post cartoonist
- Debunking the ‘Global Cooling’ myth
- DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.
- Fact-Checking The Washington Poobahs
- Facts Are Stubborn Things: George Will and Climate Change
- Fight Global Warming Denial : George Will Distorts the Facts
- Fire Washington Post Ombudsman Andy Alexander This Morning
- For anyone who might like to know what scientists say rather than conservative pundits
- George Will and the Global Cooling Scare
- George F. Will as Crank Conspiracy Theorist…
- George F. Will, ethics, conservatism and the future of journalism
- George F. Will Takes on Science, Loses Credibility
- George F. Will, ethics, conservatism and the future of journalism
- George Will – We must not allow his dishonesty to be ignored
- George Will and Intellectual Honesty
- George Will and Science in the Public Square
- George Will and the Global Cooling Scare
- George Will and “The Swindle” tell you all you need to know
- George Will and The Washington Post – Reputations gone up in smoke over global warming denialism
- George Will and Washington Post redouble attacks on own credibility
- George Will Believes In Recycling
- George Will Column Sparks Outrage, Enviro Groups Write Joint Letter To Post
- George Will Distorts Climate Science in Latest Column
- GEORGE WILL EMBRACES PALIN-ISM
- George Will is an idiot
- George Will is Not Entitled to His Own Facts
- George Will Lies; His Editor Does Nothing
- George Will makes up facts in his column denying global warming.
- George Will must hate the blogosphere
- George Will of Washington Post changes the numbers on global warming
- George Will Officially Loses His Mind
- George Will recycles global warming disinformation talking points in Feb. 15 Washington Post column
- George Will replaces Michael Crichton as the right wing poster child against global climate change
- George Will: A Conservative “Intellectual”? Not.
- George Will: Bringing You Climate Disinformation Since 1992
- George Will: Liberated From the Burden of Fact-Checking
- George Will: Locked In Ice! George Will’s climate howlers
- George Will, Washington Post Mount Defense Of Widely Debunked Editorial [UPDATED]
- George Will’s critics issue correction
- Glaciers and Electrons
- Global warming deniers have media, not science
- Hiatt, Will, On Global Warming Misinformation: Talk To The Hand
- Hilzoy bumrushes the Post
- I wish I were a Republican, so I could just make stuff up
- If a columnist says it, it’s true
- Ice, Ice Baby: When Fact-Checking Is Not Fact-Checking
- Ice Never Sleeps: George Will, Jr.
- In a blunder reminiscent of Janet Cooke scandal, the Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods plus some new ones
- In Defense of Walter Sullivan
- In New Column, Will Sticks To His Guns On Global Warming
- In reported response to Will controversy, Wash. Post ombudsman compounds global warming misinformation In support of shunning
- IRONY WATCH….
- Is George Will the Most Ignorant National Columnist?
- Lashing out at critics, George Will spreads more falsehoods in new global warming column
- Lingering Denial Media — Will-fully Wrong
- More corrections, more criticism, more Post employees on the way?
- More on George Will
- More Post reporters say George Will ‘Crossed the line’
- My Washington Post Answer to George WillNeither politicians nor political commentators
- Noam Chomsky Excavates the George Will Memory Hole
- NY Times getting its share of climate flubs in too
- NYT’s Revkin embraces false balance, equates Will’s active disinformation with Gore’s effort to understand and communicate climate realism
- On Will Column Revkin Beyond the Pale
- Post Editorial Board Admits Error in The Will Affair … implicitly
- One final note on George Will Past My Global Warming Fears
- Post Editorial Board Admits Error in The Will Affair … implicitly
- Post Ombudsman Responds, Unconvincingly,
- Revkin wanting attention: Science Reporter’s “Faux and Balanced” deception
- Science believers!! It is time to eat asparagus and march on the Washington Post!!!
- Scientists: Flaw in Will’s Ice Assertions
- Skeptics Need to Chill About Global Cooling
- Snap
- Some columnists get it: climate realism in the OPED section
- The 20 Links Game
- The day DC journalism died: Washington Post is staffed with people who found ZERO mistakes in George Will’s error-filled denial column
- The Fred Hiatt, fact-laundering diagram
- The George Will Affair The George Will Scandal
- The George Will On Ice Affair
- The George Will Scandal and the Decline of Great American Newspapers The Global Warming Cranks – George Will officially in their ranks The Great Beyond: Who Needs the Cold Facts?
- The importance of actually reading what you cite
- The New York Times Attacks Gore For Trusting The New York Times
- The NYT’s Andrew Revkin shows why he’s a top climate change reporter
- The NYT’s climate coverage in 1970s was a megaphone for science, not ‘global cooling’ alarmism
- The Post doesn’t actually claim to have fact-checked George Will
- The Post ombudsman whitewashes George Will’s columns, the editors, and his own role
- The Post’s Will-ful denial, day 34
- The Sea Ice Affair, Continued
- The Washington Post Should Correct George Will’s Column
- The Washington Post’s “fact-checking” process is a disgrace
- The Washington Post’s “Multi-Layer Editing Process”
- The Washington Post’s mystifying defense of global warming denialism
- The Will Affair … struggling to keep up
- Time for a Blogger Ethics Panel
- To Tell the Truth
- Unchecked Ice: A Saga in Five Chapters
- WaPo goes all in
- WaPo ombudsman agrees that Will’s sea ice claim was wrong, doesn’t suggest a correction
- WaPo’s Ombudsman throws a sliver of bone to reality while ignoring the lion’s share of complaints re: Will’s falsehoods
- Washington Post Crashed-and-Burned Watch: A Suggested Correction For Wills Dark Green Doomsayers Column
- Washington Post decides that George Will is entitled to his own facts
- Washington Post Defends George Will: The Editorial Page ‘Checks Facts To The Fullest Extent Possible’
- Washington Post publishes two strong debunkings of George Will’s double dose of disinformation
- Washington Post rejects the concept of objective facts
- Washington Post runs George Will’s newest column without issuing a correction for his last one.
- Washington Post Stands By Climate Change Denialism
- WashPost Embraces Will-Ful Deceit
- WashPost Ombudsman steps up and steps in it … Plus another Will fabrication …
- WashPost: Complicit in Disformation (or explicit collaboration)?
- What George Will should have written
- What we learn from Mr. George Will
- What went wrong with ‘The Cooling World’?
- When it Comes to Climate Change, Errors Abound
- WHERE DOES GEORGE WILL GET HIS GLOBAL WARMING FACTS?
- Where George Will got his sea ice nonsense
- Where There’s a (George) Will There’s A Way … To Deny Global Warming
- Where There’s a Will . . . No Way
- Will Continues Will-Ful Deceit
- Will directly lies … again … and again … and again …
- “Will” I be able to think of a witty title for this post?
- Will Omitted Key Context in Ice Age Quote
- Will, you give it up?
- Will’s whining … defending the indefensible …
- Will-fully Wrong Will’s climate change column sparks outrage in environmental community
- You Call That Fact-Checking?
UPDATE: New climate change lies from Will, Apr 2009
- Will Writes, Will Whines
- George Will, Now With Misleading Links!
- Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt and George Will: Stupid, Lying, or Craven?
- George Will misrepresents WMO data again
- Will-Fully Lying, Again WaPo Fact-Checkers AWOL
- The Washington Post Takes a Swing at Its Own Columnist
- George Will, Now With Misleading Links!
- George Will Just Can’t Keep His Hands Away from the Hot (Warming) Stove
- Will Writes, Will Whines
- The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages
- Educating George Will
- WILL’S GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT
- One Blue Marble Blog » Blog Archive » Double Dumb Ass Award: George Will
- Matthew Yglesias » Eugene Robinson: George Will “Crossed the Line”
- Wonk Room » The WonkLine: July 14, 2009
- Things Break takes down George Will’s latest : A Few Things Ill Considered
- Matthew Yglesias » Tom Toles Hits George Will
- Wonk Room » George Will’s Latest Denier Column Links To Global Boiling Document
- Think Progress » In article on new climate change data, Washington Post takes a shot at its own columnist.
- In search of George Will’s climate-denial sources : The Island of Doubt
- George Will misrepresents WMO data again : Deltoid
and the July 09 debacle
- George Will’s Crack Fact-Checkers Continue Their Nap | The Loom | Discover Magazine
- Memo to Post: If George Will quotes a lie, it’s still a lie « Climate Progress
- Climate denialists George Will, Mark Steyn and school children « The Way Things Break
- Latest George Will atrocity : Deltoid
- Sarah Palin, George Will, and Potemkin debates | Grist
- George Will and WattsUpWithThat embrace a proud former shill for a man convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges « Climate Progress
- Fred Hiatt and George Will think Washington Post readers are morons « The Way Things Break
If any worthy cares to sort these by source, or collate and add to the annotated versions, or any such improvement on organizing these I will happily post it, but I do not expect to make the effort myself.
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 131 … still no evidence.
What, no Christopher Booker Prize for Bullshit? (Current frontrunner: Jim Tomlinson, with 18 distortions in 486 words.)
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[…] but as far as I know Krauthammer has never done so. Rick draws no conclusions. Andrew Sullivan George F. Will goes platinum – greenfyre.wordpress.com 03/05/2009 BPSDB George Will has gone Platinum with over 100 articles […]
As for another award, you might be interested in the Inhofe Scale. As a reminder, thoughtful energy blogger Lou Grinzo (Cost of Energy) developed the concept of The Inhofe Scale.
I used it in, for example, http://getenergysmartnow.com/2009/01/05/huffpost-scores-a-10-on-the-inhofe-scale/ on Ambler’s column in the Huffington Post.
[…] a list of 100 items on The Will Affair, see Greenfyre’s George F Will goes Platinum, 5 March 09, George Will has gone Platinum with over 100 articles exposing the lies and errors in […]
so what’s so bad about him? i haven’t read any of articles.
What’s so bad about him?
Try a few of the links that Mike has provided….
Wow. A dubious honor, to be sure.
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I think we need a special award for Roger Pielke Jr. Only one peer-reviewed journal article under his belt in 2008, but almost weekly appearances in one or more media outlets.
….that’s right. much of his resume from 2008 is just a laundry list of opinion pieces.
I still think your doing the wrong thing about Will. He is using the facts are true within a limited definition but he is presenting them in a manner that is misleading. If you just argue the facts, he wins, in my opinion which is self defeating.
Show why his facts may be correct but the conclusion is wrong and why.
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Back when Woodward and Bernstein were practicing actual journalism at the WaPo, the saying was “follow the money.” You might want to consider who pays for this serial lying.
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Re upcoming post: Excellent; will look forward to it (although Will certainly won’t).
[…] The Washington Post clearly has a major internal battle under way. Clear because the discussions and disputes are spilling so clearly into public. This week, five different Washington Post employees (four in The Washington Post or on WashingtonPost.COM) have directly criticized George Will’s Will-ful Deceit in what has escalated into The Will Affair. QUICK BACKGROUNDER/REMINDER: On February 15, George Will published a deceitful column on Global Warming. Unlike past events, this set off a chain of blogosphere critiques that led to journalism critiques of Will, responses from both the Post’s ombudsman and the editorial editor, Fred Hiatt, an additional (deceitful) Will column, and publication of both a substantive OPED and a letter to the editor on the same day dissecting Will’s deceit. For annotated links to much of this material, see: The Will Affair … struggling to keep up. For additional sources, see Dylan Otto Krider and Greenfyre’s George F Will goes platinum. […]
[…] Writing mea culpas and apologizing for errors isn’t necessarily the most joyous thing for a writer, analyst, commentator to do. But, standing up and admitting error and seeking to learn from faults is a fundamental basic obligation that an author has in their implied contract with their readers. And, for myself, my own ethical standards. Thus, for those who wish to notice, let me take a moment to write a mea culpa. In multiple posts, I made an error. I referred to the “University of Illinois Arctic Climate Research Center” when, in fact, there is no such institution. Getting names right is a basic thing, that first check-mark to be notched by any fact-checking organization. As with many others, I relied on the professionalism of The Washington Post’s fact checkers and George F Will’s research staff and wrote posts using “Arctic Climate Research Center” without assuring that there was such an actual institution. I apologize for relying on The Washington Post and George Will to actually get names right. QUICK BACKGROUNDER/REMINDER: On February 15, George Will published a deceitful column on Global Warming. Unlike past events, this set off a chain of blogosphere critiques that led to journalism critiques of Will, responses from both the Post’s ombudsman and the editorial editor, Fred Hiatt, an additional (deceitful) Will column, and publication of both a substantive OPED and a letter to the editor on the same day dissecting Will’s deceit. In this past week, five Washington Post staff members have gone public with their concerns about Will’s truthiness and the Post’s (mishandling) of The Will Affair. For annotated links to much of this material, see: The Will Affair … struggling to keep up. For additional sources, see Dylan Otto Krider and Greenfyre’s George F Will goes platinum. […]
I’ve been doing almost daily updates on this story for the Examiner, and would like to be included: http://www.examiner.com/x-4112-Skepticism-Examiner~topic89899-george-f-will
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[…] year, in what could be called The Will Affair as Fred Hiatt dragged the Post through the mud with repeated George Will global warming denier columns, incoherent defenses of publishing Will’s Will-ful deceits, and increasingly public dissent […]
[…] December 8th, 2009 · No Comments This guest post from Colt45 is an excellent addition to the discussion of George Will’s serial deceits. (Re The George Will Affair see annotated discussions of dissections of George will-ful deceit Will with my struggling to keep up or Greenfyre’s George Will goes platinum.) […]