George Will and Washington Post -- Oops!

In the weekend's Washington Post, in typical global warming denier fashion, George Will made the following arguement:

"According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979."

However, within hours of Will's column appearing, the ACRC had posted the following statement on its website:

"We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts."

I don't know which is worse, George Will making shit up or the Washington Post allowing it's pages to publish something that was obviously easy to confirm as not true. And the traditional media complains that bloggers can say anything without controls.