"Columnist" Does not mean you are right

Dark Green Doomsayers is an article written by George F. Will, a columnist for the Washington Post. He is supposed to be a political and government policy analyst who has been writing for the post since the early 70's. 

This article is about doomsayers who have predicted catastrophe that has not happened. Right off the bat we see that this article is not about political or policy issues; domestic or foreign. This is not to say that Will cannot write a good article about the environment, but how can we believe him? This article has facts cited and then he ends by giving his "opinion", but what kind of opinion can he give if he is not an expert in environment but in government?  I already do not trust this article and the author.

His method is very good because he makes sure that he uses facts relating to what he is trying to prove; that although you say you are an expert that does not mean that you can predict what will happen and bet that you are right. Will uses examples from strong sources like the New York Times. The facts do seem credible because he cites them right away and makes sure the reader knows that he did not just pull the fact from nowhere. 

After researching the sites that Will cited I can say that they are credible sources. I was not able to find the exact articles that helped Will write his article but I did check the editors of the magazines and papers during that Will used. 

For example, Will referred back to a magazine called Science News. This magazine is an award-winning bi-weekly magazine whose publisher is an actual science buff. Elizabeth Marincola has been the president of various clubs, groups and companies all associated with some type of science. However, the downside is that she never studied science, she studied business at stanford and has her MBA in business. The columnist for environmental issues is Rachel Ehrenberg who is an accomplished writer and scientist

The way in which the facts are presented is credible because Will makes sure that he did not use a magazine or newspaper which was small or had nothing to do with science at all. After check the sources and making sure that they had a reliable science columnist, i could see that those publications used reliable columnists.

The issue that i have is that he quotes these magazines to help him make a point but only quotes certain things and barely quotes an entire sentence. Who is to say that he did not use random words from science magazines to simply help him prove a point whose relevance has nothing to do with what the original article was talking about.

I went straight to the source and tried to focus on what the actual sources had to say about themselves. i researched the bios of some authors for these publications and saw that most of the people involved are experts in their fields.