Denialist Cherry-Picking
By 
Syndicated Columnist William F. George:
Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, which is allegedly occurring even though, according to statistics published by the World Meteorological Organization, there has not been a warmer year on record than 1998.
[…]
The story recounted some Americans’ misadventures with the new light bulbs that almost all Americans — all but those who are filling their closets with supplies of today’s incandescent bulbs — will have to use after the phaseout of today’s bulbs in 2014. (You missed that provision of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007?)
A San Francisco — naturally — couple emerged from Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” incandescent with desire to think globally and act locally, in their home. So they replaced their incandescent bulbs with the compact fluorescents that Congress says must soon be ubiquitous. “Instead of having a satisfying green moment, however,” the Times reported, “they wound up coping with a mess.”
San Francisco, hahahahahaha! Whew, it’s great that conservatives never run out of fresh material.
On the first substantive point, the “1998 is the hottest year on record” is meaningless cherry-picking that does nothing whatsoever so disprove the fact that there is a long-term warming trend. On the second point, the Times story that Will cites also…consists entirely of meaninglessly cherry-picked anecdotes. Obviously, without data about how often ordinary light bulbs fail these anecdotes are worth less than nothing. But for George Will and Fred Hiatt, that’s good enough!