George Will Fails to Disclose Financial Ties to Polluter Front Groups

Why is George Will so aggressively anti-climate science? A new report makes his financial incentives more clear.

Media Matters reports that not only has Will been drawing a salary from his role on the board of the extremist-conservative Bradley Foundation, he's been writing about the front groups they fund without disclosing it in his Washington Post columns:

Media Matters reviewed Will's columns from mid-2008 to the present and found at least a dozen instances in which he has promoted conservative groups that have received money from the Bradley Foundation without disclosing his connection to the foundation. Those groups include the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and the Federalist Society, and National Affairs quarterly.

SourceWatch has a full rundown of the Bradley Foundation's activities, funding everything from climate science denial to attacks on minorities as genetically unworthy of any public assistance. Just really the worst of the worst stuff. And as the Media Matters report details, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt is completely indifferent to Will's lack of disclosure.

Even in Olden Days, Scientists Warned of Global Warming

Every once in a while, you'll hear global warming deniers like George Will regurgitating the myth that climate scientists haven't been able to get their stories straight about whether the Earth is warming or not.

In reality, global warming theory dates back to 1824. Here's a video from 1958 with a scientist expressing concerns about global warming that have only been reinforced in 52 years of research since then:



Via Grist.org

Wash. Post Maintains Code of Silence on Bogus Will Column

Talking Points Memo has been trying to get to the bottom of how George Will's Saturday column made it to print with so much misinformation about climate change. So far, the Washington Post seems to be going into cover-up mode:

[H]ere's what happened when we tried to talk about all this yesterday morning with Will and [editorial page editor Fred] Hiatt:

Will's assistant told us that Will might get back to us later in the day to talk about the column. And Hiatt said he was too busy to talk about it just then, but that he'd try to respond to emailed questions. So we emailed him yesterday's post, with several questions about the editing process, then followed up with another email late yesterday afternoon.

But still nothing from either of them, over twenty-four hours after the first contact was made. Nor has the online version of Will's column been updated, even to reflect the fact that the ACRC has utterly disavowed the claim Will attributes to it.

If the target of a news story stonewalled a Post reporter to this extent, how much would Post editors be flipping out? You can't help but wonder.

Cross-posted from ArticleXI.com

Same Global Warming Denial, Strange New Package

Global warming isn't happening because tungsten is surprisingly plentiful.

No, really. That's the argument put forth by George Will in today's column.

You see, back in 1980, an environmentalist said tungsten supplies would run low by 1990. Since they didn't, you can't believe anything anyone tells you about this "environment" nonsense.

I wish I could say today's column filled with bizarre analogies and misleading statements is the furthest Will has gone to deny global warming science or that we even have an energy problem. But that title goes to a column last year in which Will went so far as to concoct, then retract, a story about China drilling for oil off the Florida coast. And I wish I could say it George's kookiest screed attacking global warming, but this column still tops that particular list.

What's most disturbing about Will's virulent global warming denial is that he's considered to be among the most rational, intellectual conservatives out there. If he's pushing propaganda over the settled science, what hope do we have to get the rest of them on board with climate action?

George Will's Paranoia

George Will has yet another column today that desperately tries to prove how wrong all us tree-huggers are about so-called "global warming". He has a bizarre obsession with proving to his readers how global warming is a hoax dreamed up by liberals who want to use it as a political tool.

It's not so much his opinions as the language he uses to describe them that comes across as so paranoid. He uses terms like "media-entertainment-environmental complex" and "indoctrination" and "opinion-forming institutions" that connote a shadowy conspiracy. You'd think environmentalists were like the Masons or Skull & Crossbones Society, meeting in underground caves. Really, we're not all that hard to find -- try looking in Rosslyn's Gateway Park on Saturday.

Will also embarrassingly latches on to a report from CNW Market Research, that paragon of science, to make the argument that we really all should just go about our business and stop talking about this silly climate change nonsense. Conservatives LOVE to cite the CNW report, which very few independent sources have analyzed. A Google search only turned up one actual reader of the report, a letter to the editor in The Oregonian:

After spending eight hours on Sunday reading and analyzing the 458-page "Dust to Dust" report from CNW Marketing, I can report that this document has no basis for its findings, and lacking these, I can only attack the ludicrous conclusions that follow from the endless tables of results.

Did you know that at the end of a car's life, the societal energy cost to dismantle the Prius is $326,000; $363,000 for the H3 Hummer, and $400,000 for the Honda Civic? There is no information to suggest why the end-of-life energy costs are about 10 times higher than the car's initial purchase price. And this is purported to be only energy cost -- no labor, no equipment.

Here is the crowning gem: If you take the reported energy cost and apply it to the 14.6 million vehicles scrapped each year, you can calculate that the total annual incurred societal energy cost is
$6.2 trillion. This is higher than all U.S. energy expenditures as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Keep driving the hybrids and don't trust marketers to report societal energy cost information!

CONRAD EUSTIS
Southwest Portland