How Conservative Columnist George Will Lies With Statistics

Deception
Environment • Views: 34,104

Here’s an absolutely classic case of lying with statistics, as George Will abuses his position as a columnist for the Washington Post to shamelessly mislead his readers and disseminate deceptive climate change denial propaganda.

Will’s latest column makes a claim that’s true in a literal sense, but when examined more closely is nothing less than journalistic malpractice.

[President Obama] says that “the threat of climate change” is apparent in “raging fires,” “crippling drought” and “more powerful storms.” Are fires raging now more than ever? (There were a third fewer U.S. wildfires in 2012 than in 2006.)

Does it seem odd that George Will cherry-picked an arbitrary year (2006) to compare to last year?

There’s a reason for Will’s seemingly arbitrary choice, of course; when you look at the data from the National Interagency Fire Center over a longer timeframe, a very different picture emerges. David Appell graphed the data back to 1960, exposing the deception behind this denier’s claim:

Click to enlarge

As you can see, the trend is obvious: a severe increase in acreage burned over the last 20 years, and it’s accelerating dramatically. And it’s also obvious why George Will picked 2006 for his misleading comparison.

In the past, the Washington Post has refused to hold Will accountable for distortions just as egregious as this one, so I wouldn’t hold out hope for a correction or retraction.

Also see

Jump to top

Create a PageThis is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.
Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.
Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT
LGF User's Guide RSS Feeds

Help support Little Green Footballs!

Subscribe now for ad-free access!Register and sign in to a free LGF account before subscribing, and your ad-free access will be automatically enabled.

Donate with
PayPal
Cash.app
Recent PagesClick to refresh
Detroit Local Powers First EV Charging Road in North America The road, about a mile from Local 58's hall, uses rubber-coated copper inductive-charging coils buried under the asphalt that transfer power to a receiver pad attached to a car's underbelly, much like how a phone can be charged wirelessly. ...
Backwoods Sleuth
3 days ago
Views: 191 • Comments: 1 • Rating: 4