The Washington Post can't go out of business fast enough

[n2doc]

Category: Global Warming
Posted on: December 8, 2009 9:52 PM, by Tim Lambert

Not content with publishing George Will's fabrications about the stolen emails (for which, see Carl Zimmer), they now have a piece by climate expert Sarah Palin. The Washington Post simply does not care about the accuracy of the columns it publishes. Let's look at just one paragraph:

The e-mails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

I didn't add the link to this paragraph. It's a link to the WaPo's own report on the email theft and it directly contradicts Palin. For example, the WaPo's news story says:

Phil Jones, the unit's director, wrote a colleague that he would "hide" a problem with data from Siberian tree rings with more accurate local air temperature measurements.

But Palin says that he tried to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, when in fact he showed the increase in global temperatures since 1960.

The Wapo's report does not support any of the false claims in Palin's paragraph. No they didn't deliberately destroy data, no, they didn't try to stop their critics from publishing. And while the emails show there are many things that the scientists disagree on, they doesn't mean there is no consensus about anything -- they agree that it is getting warmer and that we are causing it.

So what use is the Washington Post? If they are not going to do even the most perfunctory fact checking on the stuff they publish, what value do they add?

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/the_washington_post_cant_go_ou.php

[AndyA]

1. What truly amazes me is the level of interest in that nit wit Sarah Palin.

The woman is a joke.

She's intellectually stupid.

She's a documented liar.

Her values are questionable.

Her morals are questionable. (Affair with husband's partner?)

She's a quitter.

She's motivated by money and money alone, and will do anything to get it.

She isn't even devoted to her "fans" who she will ignore, even though they've waited for hours in the cold to see her. (Proving they are indeed idiots.)

Sarah Palin's 15 minutes are long over. The fact that there's still so much interest in her proves that there are indeed fools born every minute.

[glitch]

6. No chance - she's the GOP's disposable candidate for 2012. Expect to see more of her.

Unless you turn away (recommended).

[TheCowsCameHome]

2. Don't wish that on a newspaper.

Please.

[n2doc]

5. The Wa PO is one of the worst NeoCon cheerleading rags around

I used to love reading it. Frankly the world would be a better place without it now.

[TxRider]

3. To be fair

The decline did show a drop in global temps in the tree ring temperature reconstruction.

They did delete just the 2oth century from it to "hide" that decline, and grafted on thermometer records and smoothed them together.

They did so because they thought the tree ring data was not accurate for the 20th century.

The real question is that if the 20th century tree ring data isn't accurate and shows temps declining, how accurate is it to use the same data to represent the last thousand years and cut off just the 20th century?

As for Palin, yeah she's a dolt. What did you expect from her?

[Viking12]

4. You forgot the part where they describe each of those steps in the published paper

Nothing was hidden.

[glitch]

7. Temps aren't the only thing contributing to tree ring growth.

Drought, pollution are also factors. They know what they are doing.