Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the first member of Congress to weigh in on George F. Will’s egregiously mendacious “global cooling” columns. In a Huffington Post column, Kerry delivers a withering critique of one of his “favorite intellectual sparring partners,” stepping up to the plate on behalf of science and scientists everywhere, including Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and White House Science Adviser John Holdren:

Dragging up long-discredited myths about some non-existent scientific consensus about global cooling from the 1970s does no one any good. Except perhaps a bankrupt flat earth crowd. I hate to review the record and see that someone as smart as George Will has been doing exactly that as far back as 1992. And it’s especially troubling when the very sources that Will cites in his February 15th column draw the exact opposite conclusions and paint very different pictures than Will provides, as the good folks at ThinkProgress and Media Matters for America have demonstrated so thoroughly.

Stephen Chu “is no Cassandra,” Kerry explains. “If his predictions about the effects of our climate crisis are scary, it’s because our climate is scary.” To be fair to Cassandra, her predictions of the fall of Troy were right — what would make Dr. Chu different is if the American people listen to him, instead of the George Wills of the world. Which is why Senator Kerry took up Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt’s challenge and calls on Will for a public battle of the minds:

I know George Will well, I respect his intellect and his powers of persuasion — but I’d happily debate him any day on this question so critical to our survival.

News from the front: Accompanying Pelosi’s and Reid’s announcement that the Capitol Power Plant will switch to natural gas, more coal plants around the country are on the chopping block due to lawsuits and power companies’ getting wise.

Behind enemy lines, however, the industry-funded front group ACCCE (American Coalition for Clean Coal Euphemisms?) is regrouping and recruiting new allies.

In Tulsa Oklahoma, a proposal to build a second coal-fired generation plant was abandoned last week.

The decision came directly from the project developer (global power giant AES), without litigation, but AES spokesmen were murky about the exact reasons for their decision to pull out, saying only:

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George Will lashes out at New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin for “meretricious journalism” in a column today that attempts to justify his significant factual errors but “can’t help making new ones.” But in an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt defended George Will, saying he is simply “drawing inferences from data that most scientists reject,” and calling critics “irresponsible.”

In fact, Science Progress Chris Mooney explains, “George Will made factual errors rather than debatable inferences.” In sum, Will has not only lied about scientific research, he has also falsely attributed his own opinions to the following named sources: New York Times, Science, Science News, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, and the “Arctic Climate Research Center” (sic). Before Hiatt’s outburst, Oregonian commentary editor Galen Burnett told the Wonk Room in a telephone interview:

I was a little troubled by the response from the Washington Post editors which was basically dismissive of people’s challenge of the column. That’s the more troubling aspect to me. I would expect more of the Post.

Union of Concerned Scientists spokesman Aaron Huertas told the Wonk Room:

Clearly something wrong is going on with their factchecking process, because what Will said was clearly incorrect.

We’ll continue to attempt to get word from Hiatt — who has ignored several telephone calls and emails — to see if he considers the Oregonian and the Union of Concerned Scientists “irresponsible” critics.

The factual errors in George Will’s “Dark Green Doomsayers” [2/15/09] (DGD) and “Climate Science in A Tornado” [2/27/09] (CST): Read more

Speaking before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, President Barack Obama declared that his plan to restore America’s economic prosperity “begins with energy.” The details of his proposed budgetary outline reveal what Obama meant. George W. Bush’s energy policy was based on tax breaks for polluters and making everyone else pay the costs of pollution. Obama’s decision to make polluters pay instead is a breath of fresh air:

Restoration of Superfund. In 2002, Bush shafted Superfund, the successful program to clean up the most toxic sites in America, by eliminating the tax on industrial polluters “that once generated about $1 billion a year.” President Obama’s budget reinstates Superfund taxes in 2011, restoring $17 billion over ten years to the depleted program.

Polluters Pay To Fight Climate Change And Make Work Pay. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, instituted a voluntary program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2002 (they rose). President Obama calls for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions starting in 2012, expected to raise $645.7 billion over ten years. Instead of sending those revenues back to the polluters, $15 billion a year will go to clean energy technologies, with the rest funding the Making Work Pay tax credit to reduce payroll taxes for every working American.

Ending Tax Breaks For Fossil Fuel Industry. Big Oil had no better friends in the White House than Bush and Cheney, both oil men. Oil, natural gas, and coal companies enjoyed record profits even as the rest of America suffered from skyrocketing energy prices. Yet Bush protected numerous incentives and tax breaks for companies that drill and mine our shared resources. President Obama’s budget eliminates $31.75 billion in oil and gas company giveaways and increases the return from natural resources on federal lands by $2.9 billion over ten years.

In a column at the Center for American Progress, director of climate strategy Dan Weiss analyzes the budget and finds: “President Obama’s proposed energy budget is a ray of sunshine after an eight-year blackout. Congress must now make this clean energy future a reality.”

When I first read the E&E News PM story (subs. req’d), “Boxer eyeing bold move to thwart GOP filibuster on emissions bill,” I was skeptical of the strategy described:

The chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee is considering a bold budget move aimed at passing global warming legislation in the Senate without having to deal with an expected Republican filibuster.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that she is researching the use of the budget reconciliation process as an avenue for passing cap-and-trade legislation now considered a key agenda item for President Obama.

“We’re certainly exploring it as a possibility,” Boxer said of budget reconciliation, a bill that cannot be filibustered and therefore does not require meeting the 60-vote threshold that has consistently been a key hurdle to passage of global warming legislation.

After all, the climate bill will be among the consequential pieces of legislation ever considered by Congress given that failure to solve the climate problem will grievously harm the health and well-being the next 50 generations of Americans (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe). Shouldn’t that issue be debated extensively?

But then I read William Kristol’s Thusday op-ed, which argued Republicans need to “find reasons to obstruct and delay” Obama’s agenda. I guess that’s why they I call it the conservative movement stagnation.

Conservatives have no strategy for averting catastrophe. Indeed, they have chosen to tie the fate of their entire movement stagnation to humanity’s self-destruction (see “Anti-science conservatives must be stopped“). It is now taken for granted that one must get 60 votes for every piece of legislation because t is taken for granted that conservatives will filibuster anything Democrats tried to do, including trying to pass legislation aimed at preventing the unimaginable horror of 5.5° to 7°C warming and 850 ppm.

I still think Obama and his team must actively work to explain to the public the urgent need for action and the availability of myiad affordable solutions (see “Obama can get a better climate bill in 2010“). But I think Boxer’s strategy may be worth considering. Here are more details:

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[Please Digg this post by clicking here. Updates are at the end. The NYT's Andy Revkin has a very good debunking of Will with detailed comments from leading cryosphere experts, "Experts: Big Flaw in Will's Ice Assertions." Sadly, Andy continues his refusal to correct the harm he did to Gore by equating him with Will. In a day or two, I will attempt to untarnish Gore's reputation to make clear that he did nothing whatsoever wrong -- intentionally or unintentionally -- as opposed to Will who has done multiple things wrong intentionally.]

“When a reputable newspaper lies, it poisons the community; every newspaper story becomes suspect,” declared a New York Times editorial. “Great publications magnify the voice of any single writer. Thus, when their editors or publishers want or need to know a source for what they print, they have to know it and be able to assure the community or the courts that they do. Where this is not now the rule, let this sad affair at least have the good effect of making it the rule.” That editorial was published on April 17, 1981 about the transgressions of a Washington Post reporter named Janet Cooke [who fabricated a story, which the Post later submitted for a Pulitzer Prize "despite the growing signs of problems" with the story's veracity].

Incomprehensibly, the Washington Post — after being roundly criticized for having senior editors and fact-checkers (and then their ombudsman!) sign off on (and then defend) George Will’s error-riddled global warming column — has allowed George Will to reassert in a new column (here) that every single one of his falsehoods was factual. [For a point-by-point debunking of the original February 15 piece, see CP and Wonk Room and this joint letter to WP].

And in what seems to be Alice-in-Wonderland journalism, a senior editor at the Washington Post now asserts it is perfectly reasonable for a non-scientist Post writer to reinterpret a prestigious source’s scientific data to support his or her conclusion — after those sources have repeatedly stated that their data is consistent with the exact opposite conclusion and without telling readers of that disagreement. And not only did Will do that multiple times in his first piece — the Post still let him do it again after he was called on it by multiple writers (see Washington Monthly and CP).

Much as I would like to spend my time writing about the strategies needed to prevent business-as-usual warming of 5°C to 7°C, both of my parents were award-winning professional journalists, and I think this story is simply too important not to focus a maximum spotlight on.

I will go through Will’s new and old falsehoods at length here because, as I noted above, the NYT editorialized on the Post’s infamous Janet Cooke scandal, “When a reputable newspaper lies, it poisons the community; every newspaper story becomes suspect.” Just as with the Janet Cooke scandal, this is about a major Washington Post writer fabricating and misusing soucres.

Media Matters saw Will’s column in advance and debunked it here, showing how Will doubled down on his previous global warming distortions and cited a document on sea ice trends as evidence against human-caused global warming when that “document actually states that the sea ice data are consistent with the outcomes projected by climate-change models.” And Will cited the U.N. World Meteorological Organization [WMO] — with no source citation — saying “there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade,” when, as Media Matters showed, as recently as January 7, Agence France-Presse quoted WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud as saying, “The major trend is unmistakably one of warming.” I have similar quotes from WMO in my original post.

The abuse of sources in Will’s columns — signed off on and defended by the Post’s editors (and ombudsman) should be a cautionary tale equal to the Janet Cooke story. One can only assume, sadly, that given the controversy, Will’s new piece was as at least as fact-checked as the original, which, according to the Washington Post ombudsman was “checked by people he [Will] personally employs, as well as two editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors” (see here).

And yet the fact-checkers let through a lie so egregious that it would seem to utterly vitiate the credibility of the Post all by itself. Will was allowed to publish the following statement:

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