And yet Kristol, Dowd, Friedman and others worked fact-free for the Times for more than a year. And they're the ones with the "stringent standards"?

Boggles, the mind does.

-- More than anything, I want to understand his investment in trying to prove that climate change is not happening. What is his skin on this, one way or the other? Why does he want to debate science?

The Washington Post. They're not interested in informing their audience

Actually, they're interested very much in mis-informing their audience. So let me see if I have this dynamic right. George Will spouts lies that are published in the major newspaper WaPo plus nationally syndicated to spread the virus to many other major papers (Will's gem showed up in my major Texas metroplex paper). It is all wrong either by ignorance or more likely dishonesty. Nonetheless, said false information is communicated to millions, picked up by others (Limbaugh, other blowhards) and propagated. Meanwhile, the truth is reported by a tiny website that no one but a handful of liberal bloggers will know about. And we're off to the races. Is that about right? Mission accomplished.

Steve Benen wrote: "Given that Will's piece -- which was, by the way, syndicated nationally -- carelessly mislead readers ..."

Wrong.

Will's piece carefully mislead readers.

George Will is not a careless, lazy hack. He is a deliberate liar. His op-ed was carefully and meticulously crafted to deliberately deceive his readers.

Why Steve Benen insists on attributing the calculated, deliberate lies of Republican politicians and right-wing "pundits" to "craziness" or "carelessness", I do not know.

But it certainly doesn't do much to "hold the media accountable" to slap their wrists for "carelessness" when they should be bludgeoned over the head for deliberate, self-serving deceit.

The editor of my small town local paper factchecks letters to the editor, for Pete's sake. He doesn't change them, but he prints the correction under them.

--But danp and Secular Animist -- Why?! What's the payoff for pushing the flat earth meme? Is there a prize for being 100% wrong on everything that he is trying for?

If these op-ed pieces were made factually accurate, how could they possibly serve the conservative agenda?

Elie: the prize is street cred from the crazy wingnuts. It's an extra million dollars on the advance from Regnery for his next book. Yes, there is a prize for Will being 100% wrong on everything, and it's quite the lucrative prize.

Secular Animist says: George Will is not a careless, lazy hack. He is a deliberate liar. His op-ed was carefully and meticulously crafted to deliberately deceive his readers.

As further evidence, let me point out that Will has produced this same argument about global cooling in columns in 2008, 2006, 2004, 1997, and twice in 1992. (There may be more; this is what I was able to track down in 20 minutes of Google-fu on Sunday morning.)

What's his skin, howdoes he benefit, you ask? It is his service to his corporate masters. They know that if global warming/climate change is acknowledged as in fact a process, especially a man-influenced one, then it is a process for which there are things man can do to limit it. Like, say, requiring cleaner vehicles with lower emissions, or ditto coal-fired electrical plants, or regulating chemicals -- all of which cost money and are perceived as reducing profits.

"they're interested in showing that they'll bend over backwards to be fair to the right wing."
OK... Why not to be fair to the left wing? Not mysterious, just plaintively waiting to hear the same answers again ...

Steve, my experience agrees with your informal survey. I've written opinion pieces for both the NYT and WaPo. NYT is always interested in sourcing. I write about science, so they sometimes must rely on me to provide the technical articles. But they always asked.

The Washington Post, on the other hand - no factchecking that I could discern.

From the preceeding post, by our accountable, fact-based, new media host: "George W. Bush -- who left the country a $10 trillion debt..."

The national debt on January 19, 2001, was $5.73 trillion. Mr. Obama is on pace to pass W when pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater.

Others have commented on Will's history of undisclosed conflicts of interest. One wonders how much money he has received in speaking fees from petroleum industry sources.

Btw, I was googling George Will conflicts of interest and came across this gem from the freepers: What ever happened to the notion of "Conflict of interest"?

The original poster is upset at Will, Krauthammer, Krystol and Chris Lowery attending a private dinner with Obama. Apparently not realizing these are four of the most conservative knuckleheads in D.C. punditry, he feels it gives them "the appearance of impropriety".

What is interesting is that several of the commenters point out that there is no conflict of interest in journalists meeting, even privately, with a politician, particularly if the fact of the meeting is disclosed. Meanwhile, however, most of the rest of the commenters use the opportunity to rant at length about how this shows the lack of ethics on the part of liberals and Democrats! Priceless!

The Post has a new ombudsman. Write ombudsman@washpost.com and complain about Will. More specifically, ask if Will is still taking money from the special interests he champions in his column.

As further evidence, let me point out that Will has produced this same argument about global cooling in columns in 2008, 2006, 2004, 1997, and twice in 1992.

I don't see how that is further evidence that Will is a deliberate liar instead of a careless, lazy hack. Indeed, I'd say that repeatedly reworking the same column for a decade and a half is evidence that he is a careless, and especially lazy, hack, whether or not he is also a deliberate liar.

"I'd say that repeatedly reworking the same column for a decade and a half is evidence that he is a careless, and especially lazy, hack, whether or not he is also a deliberate liar."

Good point cmdicely.

Actually I don't think it is such a bad idea for those right wingnuts to keep writing editorials.

Considering all the blogs that do fact check their drivel, it just adds that much credence to their not knowing what they're talking about.

After a while it becomes the "Shout fire in the theater" dilemma.

I'm looking forward to the day that they actually write something that makes sense, and nobody will take them serious. I don't think that is too far in the future.

So... keep on bloviating, and please keep mentioning the fairness doctrine as well. We don't need one; and it is fun to see how embarrassing the spokes people for the right wing ideology has become.

Slate's The Green Lantern has a nice write up on this, "Is the cryosphere crying wolf"--and a link to a .pdf of the scientists response to the Daily Tech's article. Will's claim of fastest rate of ice accumulation is technically correct for that time period. As well as the claim of "global" ice area being the same as in 1979. It also completely misses the point.

Basically, Arctic ice has shown a big rebound mainly because it start from such a low point--but it's also much thinner (area vs volume) so is likely to melt faster next summer.

Global sea ice includes the Antarctic--which may show an increase in sea ice in some spots for a little while due to increase snow fall caused by global warming.

The Arctic sea ice is smaller than it was in 1979, but that's not global sea ice. And that's area, not volume.

I find Will's article technically correct, yet disingenuous.

Like it or not, George Will has earned the right to write pretty much whatever he wants. If he chooses to use his column to expose his ignorance, more power to him.

Often there aren't really factual claims made in op-eds. Assertions, sure.

If facts are stated, there is generally no attempt made to contextualize them - show marginal effects of claims, compare effects to the magnitudes of existing dynamics, etc.

"Arguments" in op-eds, and by politicians or pundits, are attempts to make you believe something, like lawyers' arguments. Their relation to the truth is random.

George Will has offended the basic tenets of sound reasoning by my informal count well more than a hundred times in recent years. Of all of the top-shelf pundit types, he is the worst: when it's not factual distortion, it's some obvious and easily avoidable fallacy of reasoning.

when it's not factual distortion, it's some obvious and easily avoidable fallacy of reasoning.

Yeah, I have a soft spot for Will, even though I haven't read him for years. He was the first pundit I was able to figure out was full of crap; even as a teenager I started to be able to find the obvious logical errors that undermined the entire point he was trying to make. Nearly every column has one or more.

During the Kerry / Bush race, David Brooks wrote a whiny little piece about Kerry's platform, which he claimed didn't exist because he couldn't find any information about it anywhere, and which the Times blithely published.

At the time, Kerry's website had a several-hundred-page platform document as a PDF, highlighted prominently on the home page, and Brooks may very well have been the only English-speaking person in the world who couldn't find it.

At least one reader asked the Times "public editor" where Brooks was getting his supposed facts from. The response was that the Times didn't care, because it was an opinion piece.

(All of this loosely remembered.)

Now, if the Times is "far more stringent" about fact-checking, the Post is in a bad way indeed.

Like it or not, George Will has earned the right to write pretty much whatever he wants.

George Will has certainly been given the privilege to write whatever he wants without consequence (something he complains about other people having, e.g., in the blogosphere), but I don't see how he's "earned" anything in that regard.