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Friday, February 27, 2009
George Will :: Townhall.com Columnist
The Times Blows Smoke on Global Warming
by George Will
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Was the Copenhagen Global Warming Summit Walk-Out a Win for the U.S.?


As for the anonymous scientists' unspecified claims about the column's supposedly myriad inaccuracies: The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged. The challenge is mistaken.

Citing data from the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, as interpreted on Jan. 1 by Daily Tech, a technology and science news blog, the column said that since September "the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began." According to the center, global sea ice levels at the end of 2008 were "near or slightly lower than" those of 1979. The center generally does not make its statistics available, but in a Jan. 12 statement the center confirmed that global sea ice levels were within a difference of less than 3 percent of the 1980 level.

So the column accurately reported what the center had reported. But on Feb. 15, the Sunday the column appeared, the center, then receiving many e-mail inquiries, issued a statement saying "we do not know where George Will is getting his information." The answer was: From the center, via Daily Tech. Consult the center's Web site where, on Jan. 12, the center posted the confirmation of the data that this column subsequently reported accurately.

The scientists at the Illinois center offer their statistics with responsible caveats germane to margins of error in measurements and precise seasonal comparisons of year-on-year estimates of global sea ice. Nowadays, however, scientists often find themselves enveloped in furies triggered by any expression of skepticism about the global warming consensus (which will prevail until a diametrically different consensus comes along; see the 1970s) in the media-environmental complex. Concerning which:

On Feb. 18 the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that from early January until the middle of this month, a defective performance by satellite monitors that measure sea ice caused an underestimation of the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles, which is approximately the size of California. The Times ("All the news that's fit to print"), which as of this writing had not printed that story, should unleash Revkin and his unnamed experts.

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About The Author
George F. Will is a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide.
 
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Reply # 1
Date: Mar 2, 2009 - 3:09 PM EST
I never believed
their excuse that the satellites gave a defective reading.
What I do believe is the liberal insane monsters in charge of collating the data lied and crapped out their demonic liberal takeover codeworks, and were once again, CAUGHT RED HANDED - commie red handed...
So they blabbed out some idiotic excuse.
They lie as often as they can possibly muster, and we all know it's so the libtards running congress can feed them more and more granted billions to spew out the lies at an ever alarming rate - while they shriek that republicans ignore science and live in the throwback of the religious flat earth dark ages.
Yes, libs you are the dirty liars, constantly fudging the numbers, and now you've been caught, and more and more, your insane propaganda takeover plan will blow apart in your faces.
Of course we see it will be too late, and you'll just excuse yourselves claiming your obamamaniac green takeover of everything in the USA is "good overall for everyone".
I have absolutely ZERO respect left for you.
Stay away from me.
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Reply # 2
Date: Mar 1, 2009 - 12:13 AM EST
Ode to Global Warming-R Lefevre
For the Nobel Prize in literature, I submit my "Ode to Global Warming": However has it come to pass/// That 59 years I've managed to amass/// For in every decade I've been told/// I should not plan to ever grow old/// Life on earth it has been said to me/// Is about to come to an end, you'll see/// In the 60's, Zero Population Growth said/// From mass starvation, we'd all be dead/// In the 70's Newsweek told of scientists with sage/// Who were sure I was gonna freeze in an approaching ice age/// Reagan's election brought warnings without compunction/// Of my imminent vaporizing in Mutually Assured Destruction/// Later Jane Fonda warned no basement in my home/// Would stop me from glowing in the coming China syndrome/// And I really took in much asprin from Bayer/// When told of the hole in the ozone layer/// Next it was to be more human caused bedlam///When the clock struck midnight of the new millenium/// Now a new catastrophe-to-be is a forming/// My life could be cut short by global warming/// This latest threat is really more than I can take/// 60 candles now banished from my next birthday cake/// But wait, alas, things are becoming clear/// If the soothsayers were right, why am I still here?/// Endtimers thought warnings might spur a solution inspirer/// But they have a worse record than the psyhics in Enquirer/// As high living fearmongers' tree planting "carbon offsets" take root/// It's looking more like symbolism, do they really give a hoot?/// I hold no grudge for my senibilities made brittle/// For maybe they were convinced just like Chicken Little/// I now discount seriously the doomsdayers din/// I feel so much better without all that spin/// So when next the fanatics sound the alarm/// Be thee skeptical that it'll cause real harm/// Don't panic for you have this poem with rhyme/// Pause to remember and think a second time///
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