melamine and mendacity
I received an email with a question regarding my analysis of George Will's ANWR fixation:
"Specifically, which of the facts in George Will's column are disputed by opposing facts?"
I am glad to oblige, as several of Will's claims are indeed contradicted by the facts. Like pulling a loose thread on a cheap sweater, examining Will's claimed "facts" cause his column to quickly unravel into a useless pile of punditry. Here are a few examples:
1). Will claims that:
"One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there."
Even at an output of 780,000 barrels per day (the mean estimated maximum production level, courtesy of the Department of Energy), Clinton's protection of ANWR is costing us 75 cents per barrel; using Will's statistic of 27 gallons of gasoline per barrel, that would be less than 3 cents per gallon. Wow, we'd better start drilling right now! </sarcasm>
(Extrapolating from 780,000 barrels of ANWR oil to 1 million barrels of Saudi oil, it is apparent that Schumer was wildly off the mark with his 50-cents-a-gallon estimated price drop at the pump. It's far more likely that any such cost savings would never reach consumers.)
2). Will claims "10.4 billion barrels of oil" in ANWR, but the USGS mean estimate is that "the total quantity of technically recoverable oil in the 1002 area is 7.7 BBO." My money is on the geologists being correct; Will's track record isn't very good.
3). Will claims the following:
"The common people of New York want Schumer to be their senator, so they should pipe down about gasoline prices, which are a predictable consequence of their political choice. Also disqualified from complaining are all voters who sent to Washington senators and representatives who have voted to keep ANWR's oil in the ground and who voted to put 85 percent of America's offshore territory off-limits to drilling."
The error Will makes in the first sentence is compounded in the second. Did Schumer discuss only his opposition to ANWR drilling during his campaign, to the exclusion of all other issues? Did every voter select him as the candidate of choice solely on that position? The answer to each of these questions is obviously "No," unless Will can produce an example of a single-issue ANWR voter. Just as much for Schumer as for all the other Congresscritters in question, the voters have most definitely not relinquished their right to complain about any elected official's stance on any subject. Will's demand that voters "pipe down" instead of speaking up is both undemocratic and odious.
4). Will claims that "drilling [at ANWR] would be confined to a space one-sixth the size of Washington's Dulles airport." Dulles airport sits on 11,830 acres of land, and Will is apparently using his buddy Bush's claim that 2,000 acres of ANWR would suffice for oil extraction. 2,000 is indeed approximately one-sixth of 11,830...but the numbers are misleading. The legend of this ANWR map explains that the 2,000-acre area does not include: roads, gravel mines, and all parts of the pipelines other than where the support posts contact the ground!
This is equivalent to claiming that I could fit 148 Hummers in a typical parking space. How? The H1 has a curb weight of 7,847 pounds, and its tires are inflated to 50 PSI. Therefore, it only needs 157 square inches of pavement. A typical parking space is roughly 9-by-18 feet, so 148 Hummers should fit in a single parking space with room to spare! (When one re-enters the realm of reality, however, one Hummer barely fits in a typical space; each H1 is over 7 feet wide and 15 feet long.) Likewise, the inclusion of infrastructure in proposed ANWR land usage is necessary in order to accurately estimate the environmental impact.
I previously noted Will's non sequitur comment on $100 million exploration costs versus tax rates, his omission of Schumer's remarks on big oil tax breaks, and his dodging Bush's failed bargaining with the Saudis while excoriating Schumer's quid pro quo proposal. These are some of the reasons why some of Will's conclusions are as problematic as his "facts:" because they spin the debate toward implied conclusions that are unsupported by the data cited.
(This list of errors was made while giving Will a pass on most of his statements, allowing the majority of them to stand--for the purposes of brevity--without even a cursory attempt at verification. I have neither the time nor the inclination to serve as a fact-checker for Will, although his need for one is obvious.)
Like veneered furniture, Will's columns often look great at first glance, but his glossy command of language, the illusion of scholarship, and the sheen of a patrician wit (lacking in the cut-rate hackwork of Ann Coulter and her ilk) can be deceptive. When the poorly attached veneer peels off, the cheap materials and shoddy craftsmanship are plain to see; melamine and mendacity, one might say.