There needs to be some sort of Godwin's Law variant for conservatives who try to argue against global warming because they remember that Newsweek dipped into pop-science in the mid-70s and touted "global cooling." Call it Will's Law, after George Will, the supposedly cerebral conservative who brings this up every time he doesn't have a better column idea.For a good summary on the global cooling myth -- an idea that took root in the popular press but never in the scientific literature -- go sit in on the free lecture provided by the folks at Real Climate. Will makes a lot of the 1975 Newsweek cover on the subject, but the more telling document is a National Academy of Sciences report from the same year. The report argued that climate change is the product of many potential forces and the state of the science wasn't yet advanced enough to discern which would prove decisive. To put it in the NAS's own words, "we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate." As such, they recommended "a major new program of research designed to increase our understanding of climatic change and to lay the foundation for its prediction." For comparison, we can read the National Academy of Science's 2008 report "Understanding and Responding to Climate Change" (a very useful paper, incidentally, and available for free download). There we find that "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to begin taking steps to prepare for climate change and to slow it. Human actions over the next few decades will have a major influence on the magnitude and rate of future warming. Large, disruptive changes are much more likely if greenhouse gases are allowed to continue building up in the atmosphere at their present rate." In other words, comparing apples to apples, the scientific community didn't believe in global cooling and does believe in global warming. Sadly, our political pundits have outsourced their scientific research to an intern charged with a superficial skim of Newsweek covers. Will has almost certainly not read either the 1975 NAS report or the 2008 version. He would probably take pride in that: The famously populist George Will doesn't need no expert consensus. "Credentialed intellectuals, too -- actually, especially -- illustrate Montaigne's axiom," he writes. "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know." He does not explain why the credentialed experts admitted ignorance in 1975 but profess near-certainty in 2009. Will knows full well he's not competent to judge the science, and so he doesn't.Which is all the more galling given the good Will did his reputation as an "intellectual conservative" by attacking Sarah Palin during the general elecction. "America's gentle populists and other sentimental egalitarians postulate that wisdom is easily acquired and hence broadly diffused; therefore anyone with a good heart can deliver good government, which is whatever the public desires," he mocked. And yet here Will is, postulating that the scientific consensus should be dismissed because of a popular science article from the same year that Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC. This is Sarah Palin's argument wrapped in better word choice and made with a more graceful pen. If anything, that's more dangerous, not less. GEORGE WILL EMBRACES PALIN-ISM.
There needs to be some sort of Godwin's Law variant for conservatives who try to argue against global warming because they remember that Newsweek dipped into pop-science in the mid-70s and touted "global cooling." Call it Will's Law, after George Will, the supposedly cerebral conservative who brings this up every time he doesn't have a better column idea.For a good summary on the global cooling myth -- an idea that took root in the popular press but never in the scientific literature -- go sit in on the free lecture provided by the folks at Real Climate. Will makes a lot of the 1975 Newsweek cover on the subject, but the more telling document is a National Academy of Sciences report from the same year. The report argued that climate change is the product of many potential forces and the state of the science wasn't yet advanced enough to discern which would prove decisive. To put it in the NAS's own words, "we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate." As such, they recommended "a major new program of research designed to increase our understanding of climatic change and to lay the foundation for its prediction." For comparison, we can read the National Academy of Science's 2008 report "Understanding and Responding to Climate Change" (a very useful paper, incidentally, and available for free download). There we find that "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to begin taking steps to prepare for climate change and to slow it. Human actions over the next few decades will have a major influence on the magnitude and rate of future warming. Large, disruptive changes are much more likely if greenhouse gases are allowed to continue building up in the atmosphere at their present rate." In other words, comparing apples to apples, the scientific community didn't believe in global cooling and does believe in global warming. Sadly, our political pundits have outsourced their scientific research to an intern charged with a superficial skim of Newsweek covers. Will has almost certainly not read either the 1975 NAS report or the 2008 version. He would probably take pride in that: The famously populist George Will doesn't need no expert consensus. "Credentialed intellectuals, too -- actually, especially -- illustrate Montaigne's axiom," he writes. "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know." He does not explain why the credentialed experts admitted ignorance in 1975 but profess near-certainty in 2009. Will knows full well he's not competent to judge the science, and so he doesn't.Which is all the more galling given the good Will did his reputation as an "intellectual conservative" by attacking Sarah Palin during the general elecction. "America's gentle populists and other sentimental egalitarians postulate that wisdom is easily acquired and hence broadly diffused; therefore anyone with a good heart can deliver good government, which is whatever the public desires," he mocked. And yet here Will is, postulating that the scientific consensus should be dismissed because of a popular science article from the same year that Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC. This is Sarah Palin's argument wrapped in better word choice and made with a more graceful pen. If anything, that's more dangerous, not less. 
