About a week ago--or a year ago in blog-time--George Will in a column at The Washington Post made an ass of himself. This was not that surprising. What was surprising was the way in which he did so. He wrote, in an attempt to dismiss the reality of global warming, that:
According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.
The problem is that he's just making shit up. The University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center responded:
In an opinion piece by George Will published on February 15, 2009 in the Washington Post, George Will states “According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.”
We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.
It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.
So, George Will--and The Washington Post fact checkers--made asses of themselves. Whoops.
The lefty blogosphere and science blogs and magazines all got involved, and The Post's ombudsman got involved. He writes:
Thank you for your e-mail. The Post’s ombudsman typically deals with issues involving the news pages. But I understand the point you and many e-mailers are making, and for that reason I sought clarification from the editorial page editors. Basically, I was told that the Post has a multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible. In this instance, George Will’s column was checked by people he 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. The University of Illinois center that Will cited has now said it doesn’t agree with his conclusion, but earlier this year it put out a statement (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf) that was among several sources for this column and that notes in part that “Observed global sea ice area, defined here as a sum of N. Hemisphere and S. Hemisphere sea ice areas, is near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979,”
Best wishes,
Andy Alexander
Washington Post Ombudsman
At first blush, this response may seem to make some sense. I know I was surprised. But, after reading this Discover magazine ditty, I was pretty much convinced that my initial reading of the situation was correct:
If someone from the Post’s crackerjack multi-layer squad of fact-checkers had bothered to pick up the phone, they could have simply asked, “Is it indeed true that global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979?”
And they would have probably gotten an answer like this: “Well, what do you mean by now? Today? And what do you mean by 1979? Exactly thirty years ago today? If that’s what you mean, the answer is no.”
A good fact-checker would then say, “Well, it seems this claim is based on an article that came out January 1.”
To which the scientist would say something along the lines of, “At that point it was near or slightly lower what was observed in late 1979.”
At the very least, that discrepancy would have to be corrected. But a good fact-checker would see a deeper problem, saying, “Whoa, that changed a lot in a month and a half.”
Which would then lead to a discussion of the fact ice cover is such a noisy process that picking out a single day to compare these numbers does not say a lot about how it is affected by climate change. Climatologists look over longer time scales.
A good fact-checker would also learn that almost all climate models project that increasing greenhouse gases will cause a decrease in the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area over the next several decades, but the response of the southern hemisphere is less certain. In fact, evaporation caused by the warming might lead to more snowfall onto the sea ice. If the southern ice expands, it cancels out some of the retreat of the northern ice. And lo and behold, the northern hemisphere ice is almost a million square kilometers smaller than it was in late 1979, and the Southern Hemisphere ice is about half a million square kilometers bigger than in late 1979. So not only is Will wrong on the particulars of his statement, but he’s wrong on what it means about climate change. A good fact-checker would make sure that this was fixed too.
So, Will was wrong. On the day that his column was published, his statement--global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979--was incorrect. But let's pretend that he had written that statement on the day that it was correct. Here are the two questions I have: (1) is Will justified (ethically, epistemically, etc.) in using that statement in his column? And (2) is The Post justified in allowing that statement to be printed in its Op-Ed section?
Let's examine (1) first. Will was using that statement to throw doubt on the reality of global warming. That statement--even if it were true at the time of its utterance--does not. So, you could say that Will is simply guilty of making a bad argument.
After all, let's pretend that, instead of writing that "global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979," he had written the true statement that "there is a cup of coffee on my desk." The statement "there is a cup of coffee on my desk" doesn't support his claim that global warming does not exist. Thus, Will just made a poor argument--a specious argument to be sure, but at the end of the day, just poor.
But that's the crux of the issue, isn't it: his use of the statement that "global sea ice..." isn't simply unsupportive of his claim that global warming doesn't exist, it's speciously unsupportive of his claim that global warming doesn't exist. And isn't Will behaving irresponsibly (or is unjustified), as someone who (like me) doesn't know much about climate science would read this statement and come away with the impression that it supports the claim that global warming doesn't exist?
After all, no one would read the (true) statement that "there is a cup of coffee on my desk" and come away with the impression that it supports the claim that global warming doesn't exist. So we could argue that Will isn't just making a poor argument (par for the course for Will), he's misleading his readers. And isn't this irresponsible?
I think the answer is yes (though I'm curious to see if you, my reader(s), agree.
Let's turn our attention to (2). Is The Post justified in allowing this statement to be published in its Op-Ed section. (bear in mind, we're granting that it is a factually correct statement.) This is a trickier question, I think.
There are a couple ways of looking at this question. One way is: To what degree is The Post ethically responsible for the validity (or soundness, for that matter) of the arguments contained in its Op-Ed section.
There are good reasons to think that it's not. For starters, The Post publishes mutually exclusive arguments all the time, and there doesn't seem to be anything suspect about that. But, as they're mutually exclusive, they both can't be right; one of them (at least) has to be wrong--either invalid or unsound. What's more, they are presenting other people's arguments. Certainly, they are responsible for the arguments in their institutional editorial: it's theirs. But they are providing a forum for others to make their arguments; it is up to the readers to decide if those arguments are valid or sound.
But, as we noticed before, it isn't just that Will was making a bad argument, he was making a specious one. So, another way of looking at this question is: Granting that The Post is justified in allowing invalid and/or unsound arguments in its paper, is The Post justified in allowing specious arguments in its paper?
I would argue that it is not. After all, if the idea that The Post's Op-Ed section provides a forum for others to make their arguments, and then the readers decide if the arguments are valid or sound requires non-specious arguments to work. Without a restriction on specious arguments, readers cannot make good judgments as to the soundness or validity of a given argument, thus the Op-Ed page ceases to be an open forum and becomes, instead, a place for dishonest manipulation.
That newspapers are ethically constrained to restrict specious arguments is a pretty bold statement, and has a number of potential pitfalls. Speciousness, after all, isn't a pure binary attribute. There are degrees. After all, Will's statement that "Global sea ice..." isn't specious to a climate scientist. They would immediately see how, even if global sea ice levels on a given day were equal to those of a certain day in 1979, it does not follow that global warming is false.
But, let's be honest. Just about everything comes in degrees, and that's why discernment is important. Maybe we can look at the ethics of publishing as something that comes in degrees to. We could say that Newspapers are ethically constrained to restrict specious arguments, where they are ethical to the degree to which the arguments are not specious, or something. You get the idea.
|