George Will and the 1970s-Style Global Cooling 'Scare'

[Magiver]

@jshore

The point being? I am sure that you are aware that modern technology does suffer from occasionally glitches. Does this cause you to deny all of modern science or just the parts that you don’t like the implications of for political / philosophical reasons?

That kind of glitch during an ear piercing would be called a vasectomy.

[xenophon41]

@Magiver

That kind of glitch during an ear piercing would be called a vasectomy.

That’s actually a pretty witty retort. Unfortunately, it misses the fact that the error was noted and corrected for prior to acceptance of the data. (This is why we the public know about the error, right?)

from your cited article:

“Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality- control measures prior to archiving the data,” the center said. “Although we believe that data prior to early January are reliable, we will conduct a full quality check.’’

<snip>

The center said real-time data on sea ice is always less reliable than archived numbers because full checks haven’t yet been carried out. Historical data is checked across other sources, it said.

(Bolding added.)

The surgical equivalent would be having the size of your tumor overestimated on xray analysis and later corrected by the MRI data.

[elucidator]

A good line, nonetheless. Not good enough to steal, but good.

[wevets]

More importantly, the correctibility of the figure reveals a concern for data that belies that old canards about some mythical conspiracy of scientists creating a global warming hoax or religion.

[RTFirefly]

Meanwhile, George Will’s and the Washington Post’s refusal to issue any sort of correction, or even to admit in the newspaper or on its website that a controversy exists about the accuracy of Will’s column, reveals a total lack of concern for data on the part of both the columnist and the newspaper.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@The_Second_Stone

George Will is generally an idiot. Because some scientists were wrong about a climate prediction in the distant past, a consensus of all peer reviewed climate scientists forty years later must be wrong? I’ll concede that George Will has the ability to write pretty, but his logic is no better than that of run of the mill conservatives: a collection of prejudices and fallacies. (And by prejudices I mean preconceived ideas, not racism. Although I will say that he is oddly obsessed with black people.)

May I have a cite for that last claim? I am not saying you are wrong, merely that I haven’t read enough of Will to know for myself.