The climate crisis is generally ignored on the major Sunday morning talk shows, so it was encouraging to see the subject come up on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Far less encouraging, however, was George Will's take on the issue.
E.J. Dionne Jr., a member of the media panel on yesterday's show, raised a terrific argument: "What I don't understand is why my conservative friends are so resistant in taking out an insurance policy. There is a lot of evidence that human activity is changing the climate. There's not a lot of dispute among scientists about this. Why wouldn't we want to take out an insurance policy to protect ourselves? Because if we go wrong on this, we're making an awfully big mistake."
George Will dismissed the argument out of hand. Ian Millhiser posted this clip of the conservative columnist's response.
For those who can't watch clips online, Will told Dionne, "You asked us, how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. I grew up in central Illinois in a house without air conditioning. What is so unusual about this? ... We're having some hot weather. Get over it."
It's worth appreciating the extent to which Will is dangerously wrong. Indeed, Steve Rattner, who was on the same panel, reminded Will, "[T]he 10 hottest years on record have been in the last 12 years. The 20 hottest years on record have been in the last 30 years. There is a lot of science around this. The polar icecaps, everything we've all read, I don't think we can just ignore it, George."
But that's exactly what Will wants to do. Indeed, he wants the rest of us to "just ignore it," too.
For context, it's also worth noting that Will's profound ignorance on the subject isn't new. In January, he published a truly unhinged column, arguing that global warming is part of an elaborate collectivist plot. He wasn't kidding.
In 2009, Will's commentary on climate change was filled with so many dramatic errors of fact and judgment, the Washington Post felt compelled to publish a compelling retort from my friend Chris Mooney, who carefully explained that Will has no idea what he's talking about.
And yet, Will keeps popping off on the subject, both in print and on national television, hoping unsuspecting news consumers won't realize that every argument he presents is blisteringly untrue.
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Too hot for you? Stick your head in the sand!
God gave us dominion over the Earth and it is our right to pollute it,rape it and utterly destroy it. If God had wanted man to stay fat dumb and happy He would have denied us the knowledge we have used to come up with all our pollution creating inventions!
DOH! Dang Eve! No wonder the right hates women.
I love how liberals using language like destroy the earth, are the same liberals who support destroying babies in abortion clinincs.
"Will keeps popping off on the subject, both in print and on national television, hoping unsuspecting news consumers won't realize that every argument he presents is blisteringly untrue."
Being untrue is a feature, not a bug. Not only does it allow Will to conjure "facts" to fit the thesis, but no tedious research is involved.
Cut/paste/print. Are the martinis chilled?
So when George Will's beachfront property is under water will he blame too many fat people swimming or his house sinking? Maybe he will say it is God's will, thinking he is somehow related because of his name.
He will blame Obama and demand tax dollars be pumped into saving the beach.
It is quite apparent George Will is very lacking in any real intelligence, how much money is Big Oil and the coal industry paying George Will to say such ignorant things? Apparently, good old George would also sell his mother for a fast buck. We have been seeing 60 to 80 mile per hour winds during thunderstorms with just a 1-degree increase in climate temperature. And that is a lot of extra energy being put into these storms, just imagine what those winds will be with another 1-degree in temperature rise and than another increase after that. As these temperatures increase, the climate will eventually run out of control, especially if all those methane stores are being released into the atmosphere at a rapid rate. Let a lone you will see a drought at the likes never seen before. If you think you have seen anything yet, just continue this corrupt stupidity and you will see a nightmare you haven’t seen yet. But that is the sad unfortunate truth of all this, the republicans and the extreme wealthy want to keep taking and taking as everybody else has to drastically suffer. These Republicans and extreme wealthy don’t care, since as long as they can get more wealth and build a fancy safe place to stay during this major disaster who cares what happens to anybody else. There has never been such a worse case of absolute low life’s than has been happening now. One can say these people are indeed as evil as they can get. Don’t be fooled these people are as worthless as they can get and contribute nothing notable to humanity.
Before you make a McCarthy type charge, do you have proof that big oil is paying off George Will. Liberals need to be reminded that the american way requires the accuser to provide proof of they're charge.
I hope Mr. Will can also get over the fact that America will no longer be the bread basket of the world and more and more subsidies will be going to the farm industry to keep it afloat. Global warming does not just affect humans but all living things...many we depend on to make our lives sustainable...but then maybe Mr. Will does not care about the birds and the bees.....
I'd love to hear his take on Monsanto, the company taking over the world with GMO products; corn with Roundup built in to kill the pests -- here, have a swig. Just as we are what we eat, so are the foods that grow also what they eat. 70% of the world's soy has been modified. When Mexico tried to keep the modified corn out of their country, "friends" of Monsanto sneaked it in and polluted their fields with the new modified product which, amazingly, will not grow without Monsanto's own fertilizers, for which they charge a percentage of the crops. They've taken over India's cotton fields, and caused a fungus related to the Monsanto seed cotton that decimated their crops and caused farmers to commit suicide when they discovered their cotton crop for the season was gone and they could not feed their families for the coming year, the've greased the palms of governments in other countries. Don't want to drink their hormone-polluted milk? Too bad. They went after the raw milk producers with a scare tactic to make their product illegal. Their weed killers pollute the fields and then the runoff goes into our streams and rivers. The republican party, lead by the Koch brothers under the guidelines of the John Birch Society, have done the same with the minds of the people -- kill the unions, stop the poor from voting, stop funding programs for children of the needy, lower wages for more hours, take away the rights of women to have dominion over their own bodies, and lie blatantly while accusing the other party of what they're doing themselves. Romney touts pro-life while a company he owns is hauling away the medical waste from abortion clinics -- now what kind of waste would that be? But Bain said he was already gone when they made $50 million on that company, Stericycle, so why is he listed on the documents as sole owner, with his signature on all of the papers? It's a replica of Stalin's capitalism to compete with Ameria in the 1920's and it's working. If you care, you will vote and you will tell every democrat friend to vote. Ask half of the tea party members who the Koch brothers are and they won't know even as they are attending a function paid for by the Kochs and listening to the hate rhetoric against the democrats and the poor. Some of our best legislators who worked across the aisle with their counterparts have lost their seats because of Koch money; because of Karl Rove money, even as he calls his organization a non-profit, tax free entity.
The fat guy who won't stop eating.
The guy smoking through a hole in his esophagus.
The woman who coughs up blood and sterilizes her mouth with another swig of JD.
The hooker who is willing to ride bareback for an extra 20.
For a lot of people, lifestyle trumps life. And George Will, a rich nitwit surrounded by other rich nitwits who don't want to change what they're doing to save the planet, is no different.
Who are liberals to tell the rest of us we need to change our lifestyle. Do you not see the house that Al Gore lives in, his private jet lifestyle. Of course not, the only hypocrisy that liberals seem to care about, is when republicans are caught being hypocrites on family values.
It's easy for people who will be dead in 20 or 30 years to just ignore global warming. They don't give a damn about anyone but themselves and often these idiots are sure that since they'll have their place in "heaven", any need for them to care is not their responsibility. Greed, laziness and malicious ignorance is what drives them.
Let's say there really is reincarnation....that would make the joke on them. What a nice thought.
A conservative ignoring facts? Who knew that would happen?
A warmer climate, for sure, can be natural; however, there is scientific evidence that pollutants are helping it along, and making it worse, by destroying the O-Zone. Is the better point from anyone’s perspective, that we do not want these pollutants in our air anyway, whether they are causing climate change, or not?
Do Republican Constituents, at all, question if Republican leaders are simply fighting, and exploiting the issue, so that corporations and businesses do not have to spend money on better equipment or machinery to make pollution better? (We could use that money in our economy, anyway.)
Do we have to prove in the Supreme Court that black smog can be a health hazard, as well as, some of the particles in it can cause destruction to the O-Zone in order for some Republican Constituents to give in a little bit?
I have said for a long time now, that anyone not believing that man made pollutants cause unbearable air or alters the air, I tell those folks to go close their garage door, start the SUV and relax and enjoy.
Well, because most of us are not scientists, we cannot understand exactly how our pollution damages the O-Zone, but I assume that pollution is somehow causing it to dissipate in small amounts at a time, over time. Maybe when people, like me, say ‘destroying’ the O-Zone, people get the impression that advocates mean pollution can destroy it ‘all’, eventually, someday and I do not know, if that, is even possible.
Perhaps over-reactions, on both sides, are causing some people just to not want to believe that the human race has that power to cause any damage to our big earth, and under-reactions by some are leading some people to think that the human race is dependent on others believing or understanding the problem.
…and while both of America’s major parties are politically fighting over the issue, certain lobbyist corporate black-smog-advocates are ‘winning’ the argument; must both parties lose?
George Will is a dinosaur. I wonder how many cars his carcass would fuel.
George will is only a shadow of the former shadow of himself. He knows he's a carnival barker now. He's just workin' for corporate America. He's a shrill shill.
My ears pricked up when I heard him quoted as saying,
If the Wiki page on him is true, he led a pretty charmed existence. Daddy was a professor at U. of I. and as a kid, he went to the local 'Lab' school. Nice.
It's good to see Dionne bring up the insurance argument. That's one that needs to be used much more often, as it might sway those on the fence to open their eyes.
Gee, i wonder how much fossil fuels are spent publishing Dionne's worthless comments
It's good to see Dionne bring up the insurance argument. That's one that needs to be used much more often, as it might sway those on the fence to open their eyes.
What we are seeing here is one more conservative columnist who has obviously made the conscious decision to ignore his own principles and say things which he knows are not true, merely to protect his income.
Look what happened to people like David Frum and Bruce Bartlett, both of whom have been marginalized by taking courageous positions which conflict with the ignorant dogma of the fringe right. Its a sure bet none of this was lost on Mr. Will.
And speaking of "insurance", when will our insurance companies get involved? All of the natural disasters have to be wrecking their profits, unless they expect the government to let them off the hook. The fires in CO alone have to cost them a lot.
If warming the planet is really a trend, then insurance companies, maybe the energy companies, have to be taking on huge costs.
Just noticed something. That hot spot we got last year that covered and blanketed Wisconsin protecting it from skirting tornadoes was a start of bigger hot spots. These hot spots can pack a wallop for upcoming storms that drive winds over 60 miles per hour. And the bad thing about it, these storms will devastate everything in its path including our food supply. These storms are indeed kind of like land based hurricanes and any increase in temperatures will pack in more energy into the storm causing more severe winds. People in the path of these storms can experience some very life and death situations as it grinds America into the ground.
Using anecdotal stories from one's youth is a surprisingly effective debate strategy.
I guess the next ? for George is how hot would it have to get to believe in a climate crisis? 150 degrees, 300 degrees, higher?
As a species, we're pretty good and getting better at responding to immediate emergencies such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires. But when a disaster unfolds slowly, with many widely distributed and individually small inputs leading to big trouble fifty or seventy-five years down the road, we are not psychologically ready to take action. For all the endearing talk about "our grandchildren," we seem to prefer business-as-usual.
The suggestion that Will go back to central Illinois and turn off his air conditioning sort of pops up like a jack in the box. It would solve a lot of problems, the primary one being that Will no longer would be able to pollute the MSM when he's in the ICU with heat stroke.
There is a reason that one time the WaPo reneged on publishing a correction of one of his columns. It was because he was "throwing a hissy fit" according to the WaPo representative on the phone.
From wikipedia:
"Will graduated from University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois, and Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut (B.A., Religion, 1962).[1] He subsequently studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Magdalen College, University of Oxford (B.A., M.A.), and received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in politics from Princeton University. His 1968 Ph.D. dissertation was entitled Beyond the Reach of Majorities: Closed Questions in the Open Society."
Wonder how many classes Mr. Will took in Physics, Chemistry, or other hard science disciplines.
The veracity of Climate Change is a not a religious, political, economic, or philosophical issue.
Oh, and two other things:
We engineers are trained to keep our mouth shut until we know what we are talking about. I wish more liberals thought that way. maybe you should send that message to Obama