New Data Show George Will Is Full Of Crap

The Washington Post goes with the most passive-aggressive way possible to smack down their op-ed columnist.

The satellite data released by NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the maximum extent of the 2008-2009 winter sea ice cover was the fifth-lowest since researchers began collecting such information 30 years ago. The past six years have produced the six lowest maximums in that record, and the new data show that the percentage of older, thicker and more persistent ice shrank to its lowest level ever, at just 9.8 percent of the winter ice cover.

"We're seeing an ice cover that's younger and that's thinner as we head into summer," Walt Meier, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a telephone news conference. "It's been a pretty sharp decline."

The new evidence -- including satellite data showing that the average multiyear wintertime sea ice cover in the Arctic in 2005 and 2006 was nine feet thick, a significant decline from the 1980s -- contradicts data cited in widely circulated reports by Washington Post columnist George F. Will that sea ice in the Arctic has not significantly declined since 1979.

The reference to Will appears in paragraph 9, by the way.

To the WaPo's credit, they also published a more extensive rebuke to Will on their website from Andrew Freedman. And they published a response in their paper from Chris Mooney a week or so ago. But all of this damage control, in the face of continued anti-science columns on the subject from Will, represents a real danger to the credibility of the newspaper. They can continue to gently contradict him throughout the paper, or they could, and this is just off the top of my head, not publish the guy if he keeps making demonstrably false claims.

"This Melt Is Unprecedented"

The war for the Arctic can now begin.

A warm summer has produced a record melt of the polar ice cap, leaving the Northwest Passage clear enough for a sailboat to pass and prompting nations of the far north to assert claims over the Arctic Ocean seabed.

"The entire length of the Northwest Passage is navigable," said Trudy Wohlleben, senior ice forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service, a government agency.

Ice usually blocks at least some parts of the passage, she said. "This melt is unprecedented, and it"s speeding up."

The development threatens to accelerate long-frozen conflicts over security, sovereignty, environmental and economic conflicts among four powers with claims over the Arctic: the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Russia.

Russia said yesterday that 12 of its strategic bomber planes had begun a two-day exercise over the north of the country that was to include the firing of cruise missiles, the air force said.

All four Arctic powers have publicized their presence in the region this summer, the most dramatic being the planting of the Russian flag under the North Pole by a miniature submarine.

The resources in that region are so rich that we could easily see a shooting war. And yet drilling in the polar region would be a continuation of the very same policies that caused the cap to melt in the first place. And while the cap melt will cause sea levels to rise uncomfortably, inland the water and snowpacks are melting away, which will lead to more resource wars (the nature of man is at least in part a conflict for resources, going back some million years. Just look at Darfur, where the Arabs are now turning on each other because resources are scarce).

We need major policy change that goes beyond encouraging fluorescent light bulbs or making sure the Capitol fleet is green (although that's not a bad start).