Chris Mooney, contributing editor at our sister publication Science Progress, has written an op-ed for the Washington Post that calmly lays out the many significant flaws in George F. Will’s recent global warming denial column. In “Climate Change Myths and Facts,” Mooney shows that Will’s errors are not simply “inferences,” as editorial page editor Fred Hiatt claimed, but deliberate lies about the science and the organizations cited in Will’s column. Mooney explains why we so greatly need journalism that “is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility”:

Congress will soon consider global-warming legislation, and the debate comes as contradictory claims about climate science abound. Partisans of this issue often wield vastly different facts and sometimes seem to even live in different realities. In this context, finding common ground will be very difficult. Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science itself.

Mooney continues his column with explanations — and links to sources — of several of the errors in Will’s column, errors that fail to meet any standard of evidence, rigor, or reproucibility. He convincingly makes the case that whereas Will himself can say anything, the Washington Post and its army of factcheckers have no place publishing such tripe.

President Obama has stacked his administration with experts and advocates for strong action on global warming and clean energy (see below). Yesterday he added one more — in an unusually important position as the Washington Post reports:

Add a new name to the list of Obama appointees devoted to aggressive action on climate change.

President Obama yesterday named Jon Wellinghoff — a lawyer who once served as Nevada’s consumer advocate and a believer that electric-car owners could someday get paid to provide backup battery power to the electricity grid — as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

FERC is especially important because of the role it plays in transmission, a key bottleneck for achieving the clean energy transition (see “A smart, green grid is needed to enable a near-term renewable revolution“). As the Post explains, FERC as a long been a backwater on this issue:

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Today the Washington Post attempted to restore some of its lost reputation as a credible source of information to the public (see “In a blunder reminiscent of Janet Cooke scandal, the Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods plus some new ones“).

The Post took the unusual step of simultaneously publishing an extended debunking by a leading science journalist, Chris Mooney (here), and by the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Michael Jarraud (here), whose organizations’ work was misused by Will.

Kudos to everybody who wrote a letter to the post or its ombudsman and shamed the Post into publishing some journalism that is science-based, rather than ideology-or disinformation-based, as Will practices. Let’s hope it is a trend — the health and well-being of the next 50 generations depends on it. As Mooney wrote:

Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science 22itself.

Since Will was merely parroting long-debunked global warming denier talking points that all progressives must know how to answer, I will reprint extended excerpts below, starting with the powerful WMO statement:

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