TPM Muckraker tried to track down George Will and Fred Hiatt to better understand what led to the mistakes in Will's column on global warming. They've not had much luck:
Here's what happened when we tried to talk about all this yesterday morning with Will and 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.
Neither Hiatt nor Will need to grant TPM an interview. But Will's claim that "according to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979" is simply incorrect. As the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center said on their web site yesterday, "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." The Washington Post owes its readers a correction. This is a credibility issue.
