George Will's big failure

Feeder Canal's big fungus

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If, when discussing climate change, George Will had abided by his own rule of following the evidence, he would deserve all the praise being heaped on him now for his 50 years writing a nationally syndicated column.

Instead, he has waged a long and dishonest campaign to convince his readers the dangers of climate change have been overblown.

“The climate is always changing,” Will has repeated, as if it were clever.

That’s like saying, “Your speed is always changing,” to a driver worried about the steadily increasing speed of a car already going too fast.

I’m not going to go back through Will’s long record of minimizing climate change and mocking the reaction to it or reiterate the overwhelming evidence he is wrong.

His assertions are easy to find (google “George Will climate change”), as are the refutations of them.

Readers also can have observed for themselves the effects of a warming Earth — ice-outs that take place earlier, if the ice forms at all; snow that accumulates later; insects and birds shifting their ranges north; a longer growing season; fewer cold snaps in winter and more uncomfortably hot and humid summer days.

The climate has been alternating between glacial and interglacial periods over millions of years, but it is getting steadily and rapidly warmer now because of human activity. If you take the very long view, these changes may not be important. Life will almost certainly persist, as it has for hundreds of millions of years.

But if you’re concerned about your life and the lives of your children and grandchildren, then global warming is an imminent threat to your comfort and prosperity.

Climate change is the single largest challenge facing human beings. If, like George Will, you’re wrong about its causes and its consequences and have pushed your incorrect views on multiple occasions over many years, that creates a blot on your record that can’t be ignored.

I’ve been reading George Will since he first was syndicated by the Washington Post in 1974. The Adirondack Daily Enterprise in Saranac Lake ran his column, and I devoured it. Our politics were different, but I enjoyed the careful and crafty way he put his sentences and paragraphs together.

Reading about George Will for this column, I discovered we have some things in common. He dislikes “Catcher in the Rye.” He likes Elmore Leonard. He despises Donald Trump. He is an atheist.

But I can’t regard him as a role model, since he appears to be unable to admit when he’s wrong. Most opinion columnists have no expertise of their own but rely on the knowledge of other, more accomplished people. Finding good sources and synthesizing what we read are supposed to be our skills.

 George Will, like me, has never done scientific research on climate change, never done fieldwork, never published a peer-reviewed paper. He picks and chooses from his reading on the subject, and, in this case, his choices have been poor and his interpretations misleading.

I could find no mention of George Will’s climate change pieces in the stories celebrating his career. Other journalists have chosen to stay silent about his stubborn incorrectness, which is a shame.

We’re supposed to be the ones willing to challenge prominent people, but if we can’t do that with one of our own, we’re just another bunch of lackeys, bowing to power.

Any editor such as David Shipley, opinion editor at the Washington Post, who wants to make up for this cowardice by reprinting this column is welcome to do so.

Not for eating

Walking along the Feeder Canal trail early this past week, Bella and Ringo and I noticed these orangish mushrooms, stacked up like overlarge pancakes on the ground near the trail and between two trees. I’m not sure what they are, and I’m hesitant to try to identify mushrooms, because of the possibility of misidentifying ones that may be poisonous. These don’t look safe to eat, but the stack of them — about 2 feet high — is one of the biggest conglomeration of fungi I have ever seen.

I wanted Ringo closer to the stack to show how big it is, but he wasn’t cooperating. It’s about as tall as he is.

Thanksgiving joy

We went to Falmouth, Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, visitng our daughter, Ginny, and her husband, Jeff. We have a schedule we follow — hours of leisurely hanging-out on the couch, watching light holiday movies like “Deck the Halls” and “Just Friends,” along with, this year, quiet hours spent with a 1,000-piece puzzle; a long walk on a breezy, chilly beach, where the dogs can run; a wonderful traditional Thanksgiving meal; and a Friday evening outing for a tree-lighting at a nearby winery, sitting at picnic tables topped with braziers and a thermos of mulled wine.

Bella and ginny enjoy the warmth of the gathering of people beneath the chilly, clear late-November sky Friday night at Cape Cod Winery in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Cosmopolitan Falmouth

I think of Cape Cod as a summer place, but cities like Famouth have a sizable year-round population and some great shops, like this French bakery, Maison Villatte, where the profusion of delicious choices was overwhelming.

So much to consider! But we had a lot of good food back at home, so we bought just a pain au chocolat and a cup of coffee and shared them at one of the standing tables along the walls of Maison Villatte in Falmouth on Friday.