George Will is a “Climate Change Denier”—But Why Does He Have a Position on the Subject in the First Place?

Dr. Alex Cannara, who holds no fewer than five degrees in physics and engineering, writes about my post on George Will and climate change:  (Will’s column) displays ignorance that he is smart enough to correct, if he cared about facts…..Fortunately, there are many more responsible adults addressing the problem, while Will just exploits his readership.

If this is the case now, i.e., that he just exploits his readership, it’s extremely sad, because it wasn’t always so.  The positions he took on things a few decades ago (while I didn’t agree with them) were at least supportable by some level of science.  When I started to read his column as a young man, never in a million years would he have made a case of something based on books by two people, both of whom deliberately omitted any discussion of the science most central to the subject (in this case, the carbonization of Earth’s atmosphere).

To be honest, I remember wondering why he was getting near the subject of climate change, when he began to pick this up a few years ago.  Why not talk about a topic you understand—especially when there are so many of them, and your grasp on them is a constant source of amazement and enlightenment to the world?  It was as if he had started to offer opinions on Dancing with the Stars.

It really did have me scratching my head.  I suppose it still does.