“Debate”
- Posted by ryan on February 28th, 2009 filed in Environment, In the News
The Post really doesn’t get it. George Will wrote a column suggesting that there was a broad scientific consensus in the 1970s regarding the threat of global cooling. This is simply not true. Moreover, this untruth is readily verifiable. And George Will attempted to sow doubts about global warming by citing a bogus analysis of research findings, from an organization that has publicly said that the analysis was bogus and that their research in fact says just the opposite of what George Will argued. And then of course there is the fact that there is a broad scientific consensus regarding the threat of global warming, supported by overwhelming evidence.
But the Post simply wishes they had asked Will for a clarification, and laments the missed opportunity to “foster debate” between “informed viewpoints.” Another way of putting this is that the Post has no problem misleading its readers on basic questions of science, and is willing to publish — and stand behind — blatant falsehoods in order to create the desired level of ignorance.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
“Informed viewpoint” being the new euphemism for a columnist’s invention?
March 1st, 2009 at 12:38 am
“Informed viewpoint” … as close as they can come to calling him a liar, I reckon … though they likely do not realize it.
That is, the three explanations for making the kind of false statements that Will recently made are:
(1) Being handed a line of bull by somebody more clever and being too thick to see through it;
(2) Being to lazy to work out whether or not a statement is true or false, and just going with the “if its true, it moves the argument along” side of things; or
(3) deliberately spreading the falsehood while knowing it to be false.
So, stupid, lazy, or liar.
The stupid and lazy scenarios do not go with the “informed viewpoint” tag … if George Will has an informed viewpoint and despite that says what he says, that clearly makes him a liar.