Will-Fully Lying, Again WaPo Fact-Checkers AWOL

Having already gone platinum, the WaPo's poster boy for journalistic lack of integrity, George Will, today repeats one of the lies he was already called on from his previous assault on climate science. What is he aiming for now, titanium? Perhaps he's shooting for the Black Card (as in carbon fiber).

This latest mendacity by the Will-Full liar is effectively demolished by the Loom at Discover, so we won't waste time rehashing the details. However, for those who are not privileged to have the carbon-based publication soiling their doorstep daily, you might be interested in a little rundown of who's paying the bills on the sinking WaPo ship. Besides the full page Cato rant on Monday, here's what was supporting Will's juvenile scribblings on today's page A21:

• A4: GM full page, black & white
  
• A7: Oil and gas industry full page, color

The only other full-page ads in the A section are from Shoppers grocery and Macy's.

ClimateProgress says, "The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages." If you want an explanation, just follow the money, as Woodward and Bernstein did when they were committing acts of real journalism.

Image (click to enlarge): 5-year chart of Washington Post Co. stock price vs. S&P 500 from BigCharts.com, via Fidelity Investments

Mid Atlantic Drought Update

As noted over the weekend, recent rains just barely prevented a February-March dryness record from being set in Washington, but the developing drought has barely been dented. The latest weekly Drought Monitor, issued today, shows a slight decrease of Moderate Drought from 32% to 27% in Virginia. Maryland, however, remains at 52%.

With the 0.18" of rain which started off April yesterday, the year-to-date total of 5.18" at National Airport is only 54% of average. At this point, more than 2.27" of precipitation will need to fall the rest of April in order to avoid breaking the record low February-April total of 4.77" set in 1947. Average precipitation for April is 2.77".

Bulletin: Climate Scientists Declare Global Warming a Hoax

The RealClimate blog, which has been promoting global warming since 2004, finally admitted today that their so-called "theories" are a gigantic conspiracy:

. . . after listening to the compelling arguments of the distinguished speakers who participated in the Heartland Institute's recent global warming contrarian conference, we have decided that the science is settled — in favor of the contrarians.

Several commenters at the blog declared their relief that they can now relax and devote their full attention to disproving evolution, bioengineering magic Dyson trees, and overturning the tyranny of the law of gravity.

CapitalClimate Adds Custom Search Feature

Frustrated with all the trash strewn around the Web on the subject of climate change? Through the support of Google Custom Search, CapitalClimate now provides a feature which will search CapitalClimate and any of the sites linked from it. The search box is located in the upper left corner of the page. Try it out here:

Daily Show's Fargo Flooding Farce: Far Gone

The Daily Show reviews the Main Stream Media's coverage of the Fargo flooding:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
CNN - Stop the Press
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Disclaimer: The Climate Capitalist unfortunately still owns stock in Time Warner, parent company of CNN.

With All Due Respect

As RealClimate reported last week with all due respect, the Cato Institute was soliciting signatures for an ad bashing President Obama's climate change position. Recipients of the WaPo's carbon-based product found on their doorsteps this morning that the ad constituted one third of the newspaper's incredibly shrinking business section.

A scan of the list of names reveals many of the usual cranks. The wily wabbit has noted at least one bogus credential. Also notable is the scarcity of signers actively involved in meteorology or climatology. Those who can be identified as meteorologists are a motley crew, indeed, and are apparently well outnumbered by the petroleum and chemical engineers:

• Piers Cornyn has been described as:

  a London-based meteorologist who claims that he has a system enabling him to predict the weather with accuracy months in advance. He claims that his "solar weather technique" uses "predictable aspects of solar activity—particle and magnetic effects from the Sun to make weather forecasts MANY MONTHS ahead." [1]
  
  He keeps the details of his methodology for making predictions a secret, and has been criticized for making unfounded claims about the power of his predictions, even after they turned out to be inaccurate.

• Joseph D'Aleo runs a crank web site hyping reports of cold weather
  
• Bob Breck is a broadcaster for New Orleans Fox 8. Here's what he has to say about fellow signer Gray:

  Today AccuWeather came out with their forecast 2 weeks ahead of the Dr. Gray update due on April 1st. They(AccuWeather) say the higher chances should be up the east coast (they said that last year too) rather than into the Gulf. But their forecast is worded such that they can't be wrong no matter what happens. Is there any value here? None that I see as we must prepare for the worst as always.

  On climate modeling:

  Yep, more computer model forecasts for 2100, this time regarding sea level rises. No it didn't focus on us, but this time centered more on New York City & New England. Gosh, if only the models would give us a 5-10 year forecast so we could verify their skill. But noooo...it's always 50, 70, 100 years from now. I guess if they didn't scare us, they wouldn't be able to get more government funding?

• William Gray makes hurricane forecasts using strictly statistical methods
  
• Douglas Leahy is apparently a petroleum consultant
  
• Peter Leavitt is a consulting (i.e., for hire) meteorologist
  
• Richard Lindzen seems to spend more time writing op-ed pieces for the business press than publishing research
  
• Patrick Michaels works for the Cato Institute itself
  
• Arlin Super is retired from rainmaking research

DotEarth has a post on the subject here.

DC Drought Dented, February-March Precipitation Record Holds

PM Update (Sunday): An additional 0.08" of accumulation from showers overnight pushed the March total to 1.97", and the 2-month total to 2.32". If no more precipitation falls through Tuesday, the old February-March record will have held by a mere 0.03", and 2009 will be firmly in second place.

Original post:
With another half inch of rain recorded so far today, the Washington, DC total for the month of March to date is now 1.89". This puts the February-March total at 2.24", slightly below the record low amount of 2.29" in 1947. With more showers likely tonight and Sunday, the record will almost certainly remain intact.

Image: CapitalClimate chart from NWS data, background photo © Kevin Ambrose