In the Minneapolis newspaper today, Chuck Prentice, of Edina, writes in a letter to the editor:
George Will's Feb. 15 commentary, "Climate fears seem to run hot and cold," exposes him as someone who, in the face of overwhelming consensus to the contrary among true experts, cherry picks and distorts information to fit his bias on the issue.
He cited information from the University of Illinois in his article. However, the University of Illinois Polar Research Group posted this on its website Monday: "In an opinion piece . . . 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 level 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 milion 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."
The website Mr. Prentice refers to is here. The statement of the researchers continues, "It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts." Nate Silver elaborates in "George F. Will Takes on Science, Loses Credibility" and "Will Omitted Key Context in Ice Age Quote." Silver's conclusion echoes the scientists' complaint: "Why is it that claims that would never have been tolerated by a competent fact-checker on the news page are okay on the editorial page? The Washington Post owes its readers an explanation -- and an apology."
Meanwhile, George Packer, in the excellent Feb. 9 & 16 issue of The New Yorker, writes of the Florida real estate market and the economic slump in an article called "The Ponzi State," which resides, alack, behind a subscriber wall. This is the same issue that remembers and celebrates the achievement of John Updike, and Packer's journalism, I think, sometimes attains effects generally reserved for literature. He met a woman named Lee Gaither "smoking and talking on the phone" in her garage. Turns out she was on the phone with Verizon, trying to persuade them not to shut off her Internet. She worried about her son having no other kids to play with in their subdivision of foreclosed homes, and was hoping herself to stave off ruin by selling on eBay the items in her cluttered garage, which Packer catalogs with Updikean vigor before concluding, "Gaither was trying to sell possessions of no value to anyone but herself."
Florida's economy, according to Packer, has little behind it other than building homes for the people who keep moving there. People are no longer moving there.
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