In a recent op-ed in Washington Post, Bjorn Lomborg argued that efforts to reduce global warming pollution can wait, because “coping with climate change is something we know how to do.” To bolster that claim — which goes against the consensus of practically every scientific body in the world — Lomborg cited “the fact that the best research we have – from the United Nations climate panel – says that global sea levels are not likely to rise more than about 20 inches by 2100.” Lomborg concluded that “fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse threaten to swamp rational debate about climate policy”:

Obviously, whether it involves dikes or buckets of white paint, adaptation is not a long-term solution to global warming. Rather, it will enable us to get by while we figure out the best way to address the root causes of man-made climate change. This may not seem like much, but at a time when fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse threaten to swamp rational debate about climate policy, it’s worth noting that coping with climate change is something we know how to do.

Because Washington Post editorial editor Fred Hiatt did not bother to fact-check Lomborg’s column, the Wonk Room took on the task. We chose to test the new Climate Science Rapid Response Team, a scientist-run initiative to link top climate scientists with the media officially launched today. After we submitted questions about Lomborg’s claims to the team, we received comprehensive answers from three top climate scientists within 48 hours, even though we made our inquiries before the official launch.

In separate e-mail interviews (the scientists also offered to conduct phone interviews), the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology’s Ken Caldeira, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Josh Willis, and Rutgers University’s Alan Robock independently confirmed that Bjorn Lomborg had misrepresented the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report.

Caldeira, who believes “one meter (or three feet) per century from melting ice sheets is probably in the right ball park” for future sea level rise, explained what Lomborg left out when citing the “20 inches by 2100″ figure:

Like mercury in a thermometer, seawater expands and rises as it heats up. Melting ice also causes sea level rise. The third assessment report considered only thermal expansion of the ocean and not melting glacial ice.

Willis discussed the details of the IPCC report further:

Bjorn’s claim that the IPCC report says that global sea levels are not likely to rise more than about 20 inches by 2100 is incorrect. You have to remember that the sea level projections in the 2007 IPCC report had a big asterisk by them. The report was very clear that the 20 inch projection was probably too low because it did not account for the kinds of dynamic changes in the glaciers and ice sheets that we see today. In fact, the IPCC report was careful to say that they could not place any upper bound on the amount of sea level rise that is likely over the next century.

Robock’s response reaffirmed Willis and Caldeira. Furthermore, when asked the research the IPCC summarized still “the best research we have” on the likely range of sea level rise, Robock said, “Absolutely not”:

Absolutely not. It was the best we had five years ago, but there has been a lot of work since then, including better observations of the rate of melting from Greenland and Antarctica and better models.

Robock also explained that Lomborg mischaracterized the work of the world scientific community when he argued that those who call for the immediate reduction of global warming pollution are relying on “fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse”:

His choice of words is very alarmist and cherry-picking from other alarmists. The IPCC and the world scientific community do not say “supposedly imminent apocalypse.” They engage in rational debate. He is saying that extremists on one side are much more influential than it seems to me that they are. In fact it is the extremists who argue against any response to global warming who have been much more effective so far.

He is also wrong in asserting that we know how to adapt to climate change. If that were true, nobody would be worried about it. How do we adapt to massive extinctions of natural species? How do we adapt to all the major coastal cities of the world having to deal with flooding from stronger storms and rising sea level? Dikes will not do it.

And there are no geoengineering techniques that have ever even been tested, let alone shown to produce less risks than the risks of global warming.

But I agree that adaptation is not a long-range solution. Mitigation is, but we have to get started immediately.

Of course, none of this is actually news. At Real Climate, top sea-level specialist Stefan Rahmstorf explained the IPCC sea level numbers back in March, 2007. At Climate Progress, Joe Romm debunked Lomborg’s lies about sea level rise back in September, 2007. And climate scientists have been warning the presidents of the United States of the “vast geophysical experiment” of global warming since the 1960s, and calling for reduction in fossil fuel use by the 1970s.

Blue Jays win the World Series in 1993.

Washington Post opinion page editor Fred Hiatt continued to disgrace his paper, publishing yet another column questioning climate science by George Will, the seventh this year. “Cooling Down the Cassandras” (alternatively titled “For Alarmists, Ugly Truths on Global Warming”) is a master class in cherrypicking words and misinterpreting science. Will’s thesis — that there has been no global warming since 1998 — is based on his reading 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 Will’s 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. However, when the Wonk Room contacted Mr. 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. Read more

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has garnered much attention for her op-ed in the Washington Post attacking President Obama’s clean energy policies as “an enormous threat to our economy.” Palin is positioning herself as the face of the opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act, legislation that would establish federal standards for renewable electricity, energy efficiency, and global warming pollution. But New Energy Finance, “the world’s leading provider of industry information and analysis to investors, corporations and governments in clean energy, low carbon technologies and the carbon markets,” argues the “Thrilla From Wasilla” may actually end up helping clean energy reform become a reality:

NEF “FIRST TAKE”: Palin’s popularity among the right wing of the Republican Party stems mainly from her stances on cultural issues such as opposition to abortion. So it is intriguing that she has chosen an economic issue to pursue immediately after leaving office. Most likely, this represents an attempt to broaden her appeal to economic conservatives in the party as well ahead of 2012. In addition, energy policy is an area where Palin has some expertise, having chaired a key energy committee in Alaska after serving as mayor of the town of Wasila but before winning the governorship. That said, Palin’s reputation for zany off-the-cuff comments precedes her. While she is knowledgeable in this area, she is also bound to stray well off message and create memorable sound-bites. Advocates for cap-and-trade should welcome her to the debate with open arms.

Fred Hiatt‘s decision to publish yet another global warming denier in the Post is an embarrassment, and Palin’s energy “expertise” is a gross exaggeration. But taking NEF’s advice, let’s hope Palin doesn’t figure that out. Go, Sarah, go!

Fred Hiatt, the opinion page editor of the Washington Post, is sticking to his guns in defense of George Will’s egregiously mendacious global warming columns. In an online chat today, Hiatt repeated his claim that Will’s lies were just “inferences,” and lashed out at Will’s critics:

Boston: This doesn’t relate to Obama but would you care to address the whole George Will global warming column controversy? Is there any concern that lax standards for accuracy hurts the prestige of The Post opinion page more generally?

Fred Hiatt: Happy to, because we don’t have lax standards for accuracy. He addressed the factual challenges to his column in detail in a later column. In general we do careful fact checking. What people have mostly objected to is not that his data are wrong but that he draws wrong inferences. I would think folks would be eager to engage in the debate, given how sure they are of their case, rather than trying to shut him down.

When faced with an opportunity to restore the Washington Post’s besmirched reputation, Hiatt instead slung mud. The reality is that Hiatt does have “lax standards for accuracy,” and Will’s errors were both errors of fact and of “inference.” Will, of course, did not address “the factual challenges to his column in detail in a later column” — he added new errors. It’s bizarre that Hiatt is worried for Will’s ability to reach an audience — the man is one of the most widely syndicated columnists in one of the most prominent newspapers in the land, with a weekly appearance on national television. From the beginning, critics have been calling on the Washington Post to run a correction — something that, to this day, Hiatt refuses to do.

(HT: Media Matters)

The Washington Post has allowed George Will to publish distortions and lies about climate science for years, without correction. Because of netroots outrage at Will’s most recent lies, Will’s editors — editorial page editor Fred Hiatt and Washington Post Writers Group editorial director Alan Shearer — have come under increasing pressure to restore journalistic ethics to their pages. Questioned by the Wonk Room Wednesday during a panel on how journalists cover energy policy, Washington Post reporter Steve Mufson washed his hands of the Will Affair:

The editorial page, just for the record, is a separately run part of the newspaper from the news page, and the news reporters have nothing to do with George Will’s column. Although it is safe to say the column has been the subject of some conversation.

Watch it:

Mufson made his remarks at the Energy Information Administration 2009 Energy Conference, where he, Eric Pooley, USA Today’s Barbara Hagenbaugh, and energy blogger Robert Rapier discussed energy and climate journalism with John Anderson, journalist-in-residence at Resources for the Future.

The “conversation” among Post employees has now spilled into the public square. Mufson, one of the Post’s most senior scribes, joins Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, reporters Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan, cartoonist Tom Toles, ombudsman Andrew Alexander, and blogger Andrew Freedman in distancing themselves “for the record” from Hiatt and Shearer’s use of the Washington Post’s reputation to support George Will’s lies.

The Wonk Room has sent the following note to George Will, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, and Washington Post Writers Group editor Alan Shearer:

Mssrs. Will, Hiatt, and Shearer:

I would like to call to your attention a factual error in Mr. Will’s February 15, 2009 column, “Dark Green Doomsayers.” I recognize that there was an extensive factchecking process of the column, but somehow a fabrication slipped through. Mr. Will wrote:

According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

There is no such organization.

The Arctic climate is a research area of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, and the informal group of researchers does go by the label of the Polar Research Group.

However, “there is no such center at the University of Illinois,” the UIUC’s Dr. John Walsh has informed me in electronic correspondence. “There is a group of scientists and students working on Arctic climate, but no formal center.”

The existence of such an organization was first fabricated out of whole cloth by DailyTech’s Michael Asher, in a 1/1/2009 blog post entitled “Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979“:

The data is being reported by the University of Illinois’s Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.

I myself was guilty of trusting the Washington Post’s multi-layered factchecking process, and have incorrectly referred to the UIUC Polar Research Group as the Arctic Climate Research Center in my own writing about Will’s column. After noting that the phrase first appeared on a notoriously inaccurate blog, I checked the facts with a UIUC scientist. I have since corrected the error in my own work, including my suggested correction for “Dark Green Doomsayers,” which I sent to Mssrs. Hiatt and Shearer via electronic correspondence on Feb. 22, as yet to no reply.

The suggested correction, as amended:

George Will’s Feb. 15, 2009 column vaguely characterized a statement by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu on the threat of catastrophic snowpack decline in California due to global warming. Chu was referring to an end-of-the century scenario, not a near-term threat.

Will’s column claimed that experts cited a 2008 decline in “global sea ice” as evidence of man-made global warming. Scientists cited the observed decline in Arctic, not global sea ice.

Will’s column claimed that the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center said that global sea ice levels are “now equal to those of 1979.” Although the university said that global sea ice levels were “near or slightly lower than those of late 1979″ at the start of January, global sea ice levels are now eight percent below their levels in February 1979.

Will’s column claimed the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said “there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade.” According to the WMO, global warming is continuing, with the past decade the warmest on record.

Will’s column argued that imminent global cooling was a predicted planetary catastrophe in the 1970s. There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that imminent global cooling was a threat.

Will’s column cited articles from Science magazine and Science News to imply the authors expected an imminent ice age. The Science article instead predicted an ice age within several thousand years, “ignoring anthropogenic effects.” The Science News article described climatology as an “infant science” and discussed predictions of manmade global warming that have since proven to be accurate.

Will’s column misidentified the source of global sea ice data as the “University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center.” The actual source was a working group of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Atmospheric Sciences, informally known as the Polar Research Group.

The Washington Post and George Will regret the errors.

Despite publishing criticism of factual errors and distortions in “Dark Green Doomsayers” by Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, science journalist Chris Mooney, Secretary General of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization Michel Jarraud, Post blogger Andrew Freeman, and Post reporters Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan, the Washington Post has yet to issue a single correction for Will’s column, syndicated in dozens of newspapers nationwide.

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