There’s been an ongoing conversation about Revkin’s post about Al Gore and George Will both “overstating” their case for and against climate change. On the one hand, Gore was presenting a potentially incorrect figure, that he has subsequently taken out of his talk. On the other, George Will represented a finding from the 1970s in the opposite way the authors had intended, been called out on it by the authors, and refuses to apologize (as does the Post ombudsman). In a followup, Revkin warns that “every time an overstatement is exposed, it threatens to further disengage people who are already either doubtful or misinformed.” Really? So then all those climate deniers who read Will’s column are going to concede that global warming is real? Are you insane?

Here’s how science in the public realm should work: scientists (and advocates like Gore) present evidence to the public. If some of that evidence is wrong, journalists and anyone else with an interest in the matter state that it’s wrong. The scientists and advocates then make a judgment about whether it’s actually wrong, and adjust their presentations accordingly. In that way, the uncertainty that is inherently involved in things like natural science (or, say, finance), is addressed. It would help if the general public were educated to the level of understanding the modern scientific process (as opposed to the dis-proving a Null that is hammered home in high school physics). But regardless of the public’s understanding, the Gore “overstatement” occurred exactly as it should.

Now consider George Will’s blatant mis-leading — no mistake, just out and out mis-representing the truth. There’s no way you read the paper he referenced and come to the conclusion he did. If you want to have a debate about something, have an honest debate. Concede when you’re wrong. Don’t lie. These seem so obvious, and yet for some reason Andy Revkin is now digging himself further into denial about the horrors of over-statement on both sides of the debate, as though there were equal interests and honest actors on both sides.

Unfortunately, environmental doomsdayers are put in an incredibly awkward position because journalists are so unwilling to present both sides of this debate honestly. There is uncertainty in climate models, but science journalists are doing a terrible job presenting the downside to the uncertainty. If we spend 1-2% of global GDP for the next 10 years on developing clean and renewable energy sources, and preventing deforestation, developing carbon-trapping technology, etc. etc., but climate modelers were wrong and global warming wasn’t going to be a problem, then we end up with a healthier planet and a stronger global economy. If we don’t do any of that, and climate modelers end up being right (and remember, the way things are going, pretty much every week we get new findings that show that, if anything, we’re underestimating the effects), then we have global catastrophe. But because those risks are so uneven, and journalists so incapable of presenting them accurately, it almost becomes necessary for advocacy groups to become shrill and over-state the dangers. It would be preferable if the world understood the ways of science, but it’s not happening. So we get Gore, somebody who’s immersed himself in climate science for decades, presenting some potentially incorrect evidence and then correcting it versus George Will, baseball guy in a bow tie, deliberately mis-leading his readers. What on earth is his motivation for doing so? I guess we’ll never know, since they’re both to blame.